Laurence Cane-Honeysett, Eye Books

2018 marked the fiftieth anniversary of Trojan Records, a record label and real British success story. They played a key role in making reggae globally popular with many of the genre’s major stars being connected to Trojan including Jimmy Cliff, Toots (who originally coined the word reggae) and the Maytalls, Dennis Brown, Desmond Decker, John Holt, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and the most significant artist of them all, Bob Marley. This lavish book does full justice to the great sounds that have flowed out ever so sweetly from this iconic label and contains hundreds of photographs, records sleeves (Trojan’s were some of the most striking around), labels and archive material, much of which hasn’t been seen for decades. And as well as being a visual feast the book also has a tonne of text that will be of great interest to anyone with even a passing interest in the key musicians and people behind the music including the studio engineers, producers and record company staff. Many of Reggae’s sub-genre off-shoots are also explored making this tome utterly indispensible for aficionados.