Gérard Anthony Besson, H.B.M., DLitt. h.c., is a Trinidadian writer and publisher.Gérard was born on January 20, 1942 in Port of Spain as the only child of Joseph and Margaret Besson. His father was a white plantation overseer, his coloured mother worked in the oil industry. After the early separation of his parents, he grew up in the Catholic, Patois-speaking household of his maternal grandmother. After elementary school, he attended St. Thomas High School in Belmont until the age of 15 when he started working in insurance and in manufacturing companies. After he received an inheritance on the death of his grandmother he travelled to Europe and Great Britain where he unavailingly tried to gain ground as a painter and writer. After his return to Trinidad, he worked as a copywriter for various advertising agencies. In the late 1960s, he attracted attention by using black models to advertise high-priced products, a novelty in Trinidad. In 1973, he founded his own advertising agency together with Clive Bradley. In the same year, he married Sheelagh Hezekiah with whom he has three sons. From 1979 until 1985, he served for seven years on the St. Augustine Campus Council of the University of the West Indies (UWI). At the beginning of the 1980s, Besson was a member of a circle of writers and historians around Olga Mavrogordato, widow of Colonel Arthur Stephen Mavrogordato. This group, of which Anthony de Verteuil und Michael Anthony were also members, was dedicated to publishing works about the history and cultural traditions of Trinidad and Tobago. In 1981, Besson founded the publishing company Paria Publishing, initially focussed on republishing of out-of-print works on the history of Trinidad and Tobago. In the following 35 years, he produced and published more than 130 books, many of which non-fiction books by Trinidadian historians. From 1982 to 1985, Besson was a director of the National Museum and Art Gallery in Port of Spain. In 1995, Besson's advertising agency was acquired by Lonsdale Saatchi & Saatchi; Besson himself remained as creative director. In 1996, he got divorced from his first wife, and, in 1998, he married German-born Alice Schwarz. Wikipedia
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