Colin Larkin (writer)
| Colin Larkin | |
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Colin Larkin.
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| Born | 1949 (age 67–68) Dagenham, Essex, United Kingdom |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | Writer, encyclopedist, designer/typographer, musician, publisher, entrepreneur |
| Website | ColinLarkin |
Colin Larkin (born 1949) is a British entrepreneur and writer. He was the editor in chief and founder of the Encyclopedia of Popular Music, described by The Times as "the standard against which all others must be judged". He is the CEO and editor-in-chief of 'Best Things on Earth' an online multi-media rating site.
Along with the ten-volume encyclopaedia, Larkin also wrote the All Time Top 1000 Albums, and edited the Guinness Who's Who Of Jazz, the Guinness Who's Who Of Blues, and the Virgin Encyclopedia Of Heavy Rock The compiler of the most extensive database of popular music in Europe and the US, a writer and book designer by trade, Larkin has over 650,000 copies in print to date. As an expert in the field of popular music, Larkin has often been interviewed on radio, and had a regular slot on BBC GLR for two years in the 1990s.
Colin Larkin was born in Dagenham in 1949 in an area of Essex that was largely populated by workers in the car industry. Although the post-war years proved lucrative for the Ford motor company, Larkin was raised in relative poverty in the largest area of council housing in the United Kingdom, in the suburbs that surrounded the Ford plant. The Becontree estate in Dagenham began as a conglomeration of 27,000 "homes for heroes", and had no recognisable town centre.
Larkin spent much of his early childhood attending the travelling fair where his father, who worked by day as a plumber for the council, moonlighted on the waltzers to make ends meet. It was in the fairground, against a background of Little Richard on the wind-up 78 rpm turntables, that Larkin acquired his passion for the world of popular music, and a taste for exotic pattern and vivid colour, which would re-surface in later years in books on Islamic art and architecture, and oriental rugs.
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