The Girl from Montego Bay

As a teenager, Rose Hudson-Wilkin had a poster over her desk that read: ‘Do not go where the path leads. Instead, go where there is no path, and leave your own. Archbishop Justin Welby would later say, ‘Through much struggle and suffering in her life, she has become one of the most exceptional Christian leaders.’

In this book, Rose reflects on ‘a wonderful life and a wonderful God’, offering eye-opening insights into her humble and challenging beginnings in Jamaica, and charting her call to ministry and her arrival in the UK to train as an evangelist at the Church Army College in London, where she met her future husband, Ken. With an attitude of ‘thank you God, let’s give it a go’ and an openness to the nudging of the Spirit, she tells of the considerable discrimination she faced due to her gender and minority-ethnic background, her curacy at St Matthew’s Church in Wolverhampton, and of becoming one of the first women to be ordained priest, the first black priest to be chaplain to the Queen and to the Speaker of the House of Commons, and the first black woman to be a bishop in the Church of England.

Appointed MBE in the 2020 New Year Honours for ‘services to young people and the Church’, and listed in the 2020 and 2021 Powerlist of the 100 the most influential people in the UK of African/African-Caribbean descent, Rose discloses that if there’s one thing she would like to see change in her lifetime, it’s that accomplishments like hers stop being ‘firsts’ and simply become normal.