Young actress, 19, killed in horror crash on way to perform for kids at library
A young actress died after the car she was travelling in collided with a lorry as she was on the way to perform for some excited children.
Rosa Taylor, 19, was on her way to a theatre show in Corsham, Wiltshire, last Thursday when she was involved in the horror crash. Emergency services were called but the teenager was pronounced dead at the scene. The fatal crash involved a Hyundai i10 and a Scania Tipper HGV and happened at around 1.30pm on the A4, near Wiltshire's border with Somerset.
Her devastated family have today issued a moving tribute to her. Rosa's father Gareth Taylor said his daughter was a loving and talented young person with a fantastic life ahead of her. He said: "Anyone who knew Rosa would agree that she was the most beautiful person inside and out.
"She was the very definition of a spirit that shines brightly and dies young, loved by anyone who met her. She was at once the most talented, most beautiful, and most loving soul I've ever known." Rosa loved performing, playing lead roles at the Artz Centre in Skelmersdale, Lancashire, before heading to the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA) Sixth Form College to study musical theatre.
She had recently been accepted to study at Trinity Laban Conservatoire, in London, where she was due to start in September, SomersetLive report. The teen, who was from from Upholland, Lancashire, also performed with Liverpool Empire Youth Theatre in productions such as Legally Blonde: The Musical, and in Wow Liverpool's WOW That's What I Call Musicals at the Liverpool Playhouse.
This month, was touring as the lead in the Beggars Belief Collective production of SCRUMPTIOUS! She was on her way to the next performance at Corsham Library on the day of the crash. Rosa also worked as an entertainer at children's birthday parties, performing as beloved characters and celebrities such as Ariana Grande, Aladdin's Jasmine, and Beauty and The Beast's Belle to put a smile on young kids' faces.
She also worked at Briar's Hall Hotel in Ormskirk. Her loved ones remember her as 'a shining star,' 'the greatest friend anyone could have asked for,' and the 'most naturally gifted performer you had ever seen.'
After the crash, a spokesperson for Wiltshire Police said: "Our thoughts are with her family and friends at this time. Any witnesses or anyone with dash cam footage should contact the Serious Collision Investigation Team on 01225 694597 quoting log 54250100571. Alternatively you can contact the team directly by emailing SCIT@wiltshire.police.uk."
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The Guardian
17 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘We are diverse cultures come together': the vision of harmony behind Manchester's Caribbean carnival
The Caribbean islands of St Kitts and Nevis are 4,000 miles from Greater Manchester and a fraction of the size. But the dual-island nation inspired a tradition in the English metropolis that is still going 55 years on – the annual carnival in Moss Side. Geraldine Walters, 79, a retired mental health nurse who was born in St Kitts, and her late husband, Rudolph, from Nevis, were on the very first organising committee from the Leeward Islands People's Association (Lipa). She remembers how passionate everyone was about making it work – so passionate that when funding from the authorities arrived late one year, carnival treasurer Rudolph took out a loan to fund it, using their home as collateral, without her knowing. She said: 'We had it for people to come together and have a good time and enjoy themselves, because sometimes in the community you didn't know anyone – it was for Black, white, anyone who wanted to come and enjoy themselves.' It's a legacy that still unites people today. This weekend, thousands will gather in and around Princess Road, the route to Manchester airport that bisects Moss Side, for a celebration of Caribbean culture that would not be possible without the carnivals of the early 70s. Locita Brandy, now 90, left Nevis for Britain in the late 1950s. The Manchester she came to, with its gaslit terraced streets, was austere and still scarred by the war. In those early days making a new life on Carter Street, Moss Side, to help her family back at home, living conditions involved 'four people in one room, cooking on a paraffin heater on a landing upstairs' and encountering the idea of 'race' and its inequalities for the very first time, her son, Keithly Brandy says. As a Black woman at that time her opportunities to socialise were restricted not just by race, but by gender roles, Keithly says. But through the Church of England and the Mothers' Union she began to develop as an activist, while bringing up six children. By 1970, émigrés from the Leeward Islands – the arc of tropical jewels between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean – including Locita Brandy and the Walters, decided to stage an event that would brighten up the year. Five years earlier, they had formed the Leeward Islands Association, at the home of local baker Billy Hanley, with the objective of 'promoting racial harmony, morally, socially and culturally'. The first event involved Lipa joining Alexandra Park's centenary festival, which was like an English summer fete, before throwing an impromptu procession through the streets, with one steel band and three floats. In the years that followed, Irish dancers mingled with the carnival traditions of Trinidad, Grenada, Montserrat, St Kitts and Nevis and Antigua, infused with the spirit of Jamaica's junkanoo masquerades, with troupes led by a police marching band and white horses parading through Moss Side, and dances in the neighbourhood's Polish Club. There were no elaborate costumes. Moss Side's traditional English haberdashers donated fabric for the event, while the late Labour MP Tony Lloyd acted as patron, and big Manchester employers such as Kellogg's acted as sponsors. Prizes for the carnival king and queen were handed out at Belle Vue fairground. The day started early – and when it was over, everyone got together to clear up the litter. 'That's what I like about Manchester,' Viola Walters, Geraldine's daughter, who made costumes for carnivals past while her mother cooked 'for thousands', said. 'We are diverse and different cultures come together.' Manchester's carnival has evolved through the years, with continued debates in the city about how it can stay true to its roots. Pioneers like the Walters, describe feeling left behind – although today's event says it celebrates the 'elders' who 'worked tirelessly' to keep it going. When asked to sum up his mother's legacy, Keithly Brandy, who, with his siblings, grew up steeped in the traditions of Manchester's earliest carnivals, uses just one word, without any hesitation: 'Overlooked.' 'It's been an uphill struggle to get mum's legacy recognised,' he added. Keithly is now working through the dozens of crates that his mother compiled in a lifetime of activism that took her to South Africa on pan-African missions, and to Croatia, Poland and Russia with the Mothers' Union. Her papers, now being carefully catalogued by Manchester's Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Resource Centre, are thought to comprise one of the UK's most extensive, post-Windrush Black history archives. Keithly envisages a future where insights from the collection will be taught in schools, alongside African languages. There are unmarked signs all over Manchester of Locita Brandy's work as a campaigner, educator, social worker, councillor and Christian activist. In the pelican crossing she fought for in Moss Side after a child was knocked over. In the sports ground that was set up for girls to enjoy sport. In the memories of adults who enjoyed their first childhood trips to the seaside through the Normanby Street youth project she began, and the former pupils of the now-closed Birley High who remember the African-Caribbean-inspired dishes she introduced to the menu while working at the school kitchen. For Locita and the early carnival organisers, including Basil Gumbs and Estelle Palmer (the great-grandmother of Premier League footballer Cole Palmer) carnival was just one way of keeping heritage alive. 'Mrs Brandy and the others who came here as part of the Windrush generation, they were homesick,' the Manchester historian Linford Sweeney said. 'And while London had their carnival, there was nothing going on in Manchester for the community, it was basically work, work, work and more work.' As a fusion of pan-African, uniquely Caribbean and European traditions, a traditional carnival – with its mas bands, steelpans, feathered headdresses and costumes, carnival queen, princess and prince – derives directly from the tensions and exchanges of colonialism. It draws on traditional African masquerades as well the parodies of French colonisers' masked balls that enslaved people would hold in Trinidad; the word carnival – which by one interpretation means 'farewell to meat' – is linked to Roman Catholic, Lenten traditions. Fundamentally, Sweeney says, carnival is about freedom. 'It's not a party really, it's a celebration,' he said. 'It's meant to be a celebration of freedom. In 1834, with the end of slavery, people got their chance to be free to do what they wanted to do, went through the streets and they had various parades and various things to celebrate freedom. 'We can't forget that. If we forget what happened to us when we were called three-fifths human and called property, then I'm sorry for the next generation, because they could end up in exactly the same position.' The British, post-Windrush version of carnival, while echoing liberation celebrations, accelerated with the introduction of Jamaican sound system culture, which brought reggae and soca outdoors. 'My mum allowed me, as a young person, to introduce the sound systems to carnival,' Keithly Brandy said. I had friends in London – the Mastermind Roadshow, though they were called Conqueror at the time, and they were allowed to come down and play. They played at the Abasindi Centre until 5am.' Sweeney has fond memories of spending the 70s setting up youth theatres in Manchester and riding with the Natty Bongo sound system. 'Carnival and sound systems went hand in hand,' he said. 'People were starting to really think, listen, let's get out of the house parties – the ones the older people used to do in people's front rooms. The blues parties started coming in with the sound systems. We'd go to the Russell Club and then a blues party – we didn't finish until 6am in the morning.' Manchester Caribbean Carnival is on 9 and 10 August, with a packed programme of events from early, including J'Ouvert, a parade and music in Alexandra Park, Moss Side
The Guardian
a day ago
- The Guardian
‘We are diverse cultures come together': the vision of harmony behind Manchester's Caribbean carnival
The Caribbean islands of St Kitts and Nevis are 4,000 miles from Greater Manchester and a fraction of the size. But the dual-island nation inspired a tradition in the English metropolis that is still going 55 years on – the annual carnival in Moss Side. Geraldine Walters, 79, a retired mental health nurse who was born in St Kitts, and her late husband, Rudolph, from Nevis, were on the very first organising committee from the Leeward Islands People's Association (Lipa). She remembers how passionate everyone was about making it work – so passionate that when funding from the authorities arrived late one year, carnival treasurer Rudolph took out a loan to fund it, using their home as collateral, without her knowing. She said: 'We had it for people to come together and have a good time and enjoy themselves, because sometimes in the community you didn't know anyone – it was for Black, white, anyone who wanted to come and enjoy themselves.' It's a legacy that still unites people today. This weekend, thousands will gather in and around Princess Road, the route to Manchester airport that bisects Moss Side, for a celebration of Caribbean culture that would not be possible without the carnivals of the early 70s. Locita Brandy, now 90, left Nevis for Britain in the late 1950s. The Manchester she came to, with its gaslit terraced streets, was austere and still scarred by the war. In those early days making a new life on Carter Street, Moss Side, to help her family back at home, living conditions involved 'four people in one room, cooking on a paraffin heater on a landing upstairs' and encountering the idea of 'race' and its inequalities for the very first time, her son, Keithly Brandy says. As a Black woman at that time her opportunities to socialise were restricted not just by race, but by gender roles, Keithly says. But through the Church of England and the Mothers' Union she began to develop as an activist, while bringing up six children. By 1970, émigrés from the Leeward Islands – the arc of tropical jewels between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean – including Locita Brandy and the Walters, decided to stage an event that would brighten up the year. Five years earlier, they had formed the Leeward Islands Association, at the home of local baker Billy Hanley, with the objective of 'promoting racial harmony, morally, socially and culturally'. The first event involved Lipa joining Alexandra Park's centenary festival, which was like an English summer fete, before throwing an impromptu procession through the streets, with one steel band and three floats. In the years that followed, Irish dancers mingled with the carnival traditions of Trinidad, Grenada, Montserrat, St Kitts and Nevis and Antigua, infused with the spirit of Jamaica's junkanoo masquerades, with troupes led by a police marching band and white horses parading through Moss Side, and dances in the neighbourhood's Polish Club. There were no elaborate costumes. Moss Side's traditional English haberdashers donated fabric for the event, while the late Labour MP Tony Lloyd acted as patron, and big Manchester employers such as Kellogg's acted as sponsors. Prizes for the carnival king and queen were handed out at Belle Vue fairground. The day started early – and when it was over, everyone got together to clear up the litter. 'That's what I like about Manchester,' Viola Walters, Geraldine's daughter, who made costumes for carnivals past while her mother cooked 'for thousands', said. 'We are diverse and different cultures come together.' Manchester's carnival has evolved through the years, with continued debates in the city about how it can stay true to its roots. Pioneers like the Walters, describe feeling left behind – although today's event says it celebrates the 'elders' who 'worked tirelessly' to keep it going. When asked to sum up his mother's legacy, Keithly Brandy, who, with his siblings, grew up steeped in the traditions of Manchester's earliest carnivals, uses just one word, without any hesitation: 'Overlooked.' 'It's been an uphill struggle to get mum's legacy recognised,' he added. Keithly is now working through the dozens of crates that his mother compiled in a lifetime of activism that took her to South Africa on pan-African missions, and to Croatia, Poland and Russia with the Mothers' Union. Her papers, now being carefully catalogued by Manchester's Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Resource Centre, are thought to comprise one of the UK's most extensive, post-Windrush Black history archives. Keithly envisages a future where insights from the collection will be taught in schools, alongside African languages. There are unmarked signs all over Manchester of Locita Brandy's work as a campaigner, educator, social worker, councillor and Christian activist. In the pelican crossing she fought for in Moss Side after a child was knocked over. In the sports ground that was set up for girls to enjoy sport. In the memories of adults who enjoyed their first childhood trips to the seaside through the Normanby Street youth project she began, and the former pupils of the now-closed Birley High who remember the African-Caribbean-inspired dishes she introduced to the menu while working at the school kitchen. For Locita and the early carnival organisers, including Basil Gumbs and Estelle Palmer (the great-grandmother of Premier League footballer Cole Palmer) carnival was just one way of keeping heritage alive. 'Mrs Brandy and the others who came here as part of the Windrush generation, they were homesick,' the Manchester historian Linford Sweeney said. 'And while London had their carnival, there was nothing going on in Manchester for the community, it was basically work, work, work and more work.' As a fusion of pan-African, uniquely Caribbean and European traditions, a traditional carnival – with its mas bands, steelpans, feathered headdresses and costumes, carnival queen, princess and prince – derives directly from the tensions and exchanges of colonialism. It draws on traditional African masquerades as well the parodies of French colonisers' masked balls that enslaved people would hold in Trinidad; the word carnival – which by one interpretation means 'farewell to meat' – is linked to Roman Catholic, Lenten traditions. Fundamentally, Sweeney says, carnival is about freedom. 'It's not a party really, it's a celebration,' he said. 'It's meant to be a celebration of freedom. In 1834, with the end of slavery, people got their chance to be free to do what they wanted to do, went through the streets and they had various parades and various things to celebrate freedom. 'We can't forget that. If we forget what happened to us when we were called three-fifths human and called property, then I'm sorry for the next generation, because they could end up in exactly the same position.' The British, post-Windrush version of carnival, while echoing liberation celebrations, accelerated with the introduction of Jamaican sound system culture, which brought reggae and soca outdoors. 'My mum allowed me, as a young person, to introduce the sound systems to carnival,' Keithly Brandy said. I had friends in London – the Mastermind Roadshow, though they were called Conqueror at the time, and they were allowed to come down and play. They played at the Abasindi Centre until 5am.' Sweeney has fond memories of spending the 70s setting up youth theatres in Manchester and riding with the Natty Bongo sound system. 'Carnival and sound systems went hand in hand,' he said. 'People were starting to really think, listen, let's get out of the house parties – the ones the older people used to do in people's front rooms. The blues parties started coming in with the sound systems. We'd go to the Russell Club and then a blues party – we didn't finish until 6am in the morning.' Manchester Caribbean Carnival is on 9 and 10 August, with a packed programme of events from early, including J'Ouvert, a parade and music in Alexandra Park, Moss Side
New Statesman
3 days ago
- New Statesman
Dua Lipa, the people's critic
I don't think it's too much of a reach for me to assume that, if you're reading this, your preferred method of consuming literary criticism is in the pages of an esteemed 122-year-old magazine, perhaps alongside the weekend newspaper supplements. That's not to say you don't do other media. Perhaps you were a fan of Radio 4's Open Book before the BBC shuttered it at the end of last year. You might never miss an episode of the much-loved Backlisted podcast. It's likely you get to the Hay or Cheltenham festivals when you can. But the foremost champion of books right now, you might be surprised to hear, is a pop star. Dua Lipa's Service95 Book Club, for which the global pop powerhouse interviews acclaimed authors, has been a regular fixture on YouTube since 2023. In that time, Lipa has spoken to the Pulitzer Prize-winning Hernán Díaz, the Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk and the novelist-turned-public intellectual Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Clearly, Lipa has taste. The singer's love of books extends beyond this platform: she often posts pouty Instagram portraits where she holds up a recommended title, and has for several years been associated with the Booker Prize, speaking movingly at its 2022 ceremony about how reading the works of the novelist Ismail Kadare as a teenager helped her connect with her family's Kosovan-Albanian heritage. 'I often wonder if authors realise just how many gifts they give us,' she said then. Now, Service95 Book Club is available in podcast form. It delivers, for all intents and purposes, a classic author interview format: Lipa introduces a writer, and together they discuss the major themes of one of their books. She asks about the origin of the tale, as well as their linguistic and formal choices. Across 40-45 minutes, the episode becomes a thorough exploration of the text in question. Lipa's podcast isn't revolutionary. It doesn't imagine a new critical form altogether in the way BookTok did five or so years ago. But it nonetheless marks a significant shift in the landscape of mainstream literary media. As many publications' literary pages have steadily decreased in number and readership, book coverage on the radio has thinned and decent literary programming on TV remains a fantasy, a new approach has emerged: here is a glamorous, 29-year-old chart-topper taking a break from headlining stadiums around the world to lead the charge for books. The book snobs won't want to hear it, but for the most part Lipa is a satisfying interviewer. She chooses quality texts, not just the obvious latest bestsellers. In recent months her guests have included Max Porter, the author of Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, and Guadalupe Nettel, the Mexican writer whose novel Still Born has found acclaim in English translation. Lipa selects books published by independent presses as well as the 'Big Five', is unafraid of tackling weighty political themes, and isn't confined by the publishing cycle, often choosing titles that appeared years ago. Like any good critic, she thinks deeply about each of the texts she discusses. Her recent episode with Vincent Delecroix, the French author of the International Booker-shortlisted novel Small Boat – a story of 27 migrants who die while crossing the Channel, told from the perspective of an onshore operator who refuses to provide help – is a showcase in close reading and moral clarity. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Admittedly, not all of the episodes are stellar: Lipa's chat with the American novelist Ocean Vuong gets a little soppy and self-congratulatory, and I have once too often heard her perform a real bugbear of mine: answering her own question in the question, therefore assuming a response rather than leaving it open for the author. But there is no doubt she is championing literary culture among a generation – hell, a population – for whom reading has become passé compared to screen addiction. Last year the National Literacy Trust found that only 35 per cent of children over the age of eight enjoy reading in their spare time, the lowest figure ever recorded, while more recent polling by YouGov has found that 40 per cent of Britons have not read or listened to a book in the past year. Lipa's podcast alone is never going to solve the calamitous demise of reading for pleasure. But even if a sliver of her listenership buy or borrow a book they otherwise wouldn't have, it's unquestionably a worthwhile project – for her, for those readers, and for all of us who love literature. Ellen Peirson-Hagger covers education as senior writer at 'Tes', and music and books as a freelance writer [See also: Long live the solar power revolution] Related This article appears in the 07 Aug 2025 issue of the New Statesman, Summer Special 2025
