 Berry's writing often "explores the relationship between black and white communities and in particular, the excitement and tensions in the evolving relationship of the Caribbean immigrants with Britain and British society from the 1940s onwards".As the editor of two seminal anthologies, "Bluefoot Traveller" (1976) and "News for Babylon" (1984), he was in the forefront of championing West Indian/British writing.The son of Robert Berry, a smallholder, and his wife Maud, a seamstress, James Berry was born and grew up in rural Portland, Jamaica.