Paul Danquah

Paul Danquah was a British film actor, barrister and World Bank consultant, and the eldest son of the Ghanaian statesman J. B. Danquah. He is best known for playing Jimmy, the sailor, in the film A Taste of Honey (1961).

Early life

He was born Joseph Paul Walcott on 25 May 1925 in London, where he grew up. His mother, Bertha May Walcott, was English, and his father, Joseph Boakye Danquah, was a leading Gold Coast politician and one of the "Big Six" of Ghana's independence movement.

Acting

While still a law student he made his film debut in A Taste of Honey, adapted from Shelagh Delaney's play. His scene with Rita Tushingham has been described as the first interracial kiss on the British screen, and The New York Times called his performance "gentle and subtle". In 1965 he presented the BBC Two children's programme Play School, reportedly the first black presenter of a children's programme in the UK.

Law and banking

He was called to the bar at the Inner Temple and also qualified in Ghana and in Washington, D.C. He worked as a consultant for the World Bank until he retired in 1986, and in Washington befriended Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Roberta Flack and Nina Simone.

Francis Bacon

From 1956 to 1961 the painter Francis Bacon lived with Danquah and his partner, Peter Pollock, at their flat in Battersea. The couple moved to Tangier in Morocco in the late 1970s. In the late 1990s they found a suitcase of Bacon drawings, which the Tate acquired and exhibited in 1999.

Death

He died in Tangier on 13 August 2015, aged 90, and was buried beside Pollock in Boubana Cemetery, as he had asked in his will.