Edward Ricardo (E.R) Braithwaite never lost his distinctive Guyanese but clear, crisp accent even though he spent most of his long life away from his South American birthplace. Blessed with a cultured mother who loved the English language, she insisted that he use it well, even as a small boy. That passion for carefully choosing and arranging words came in good stead when Ted, as he was known, wrote his first book, the autobiographical “To Sir, With Love,” published in the United Kingdom in 1959, that raced on to become the well-loved international bestseller.
In a long, revealing interview, in 2009, a youthful E.R reminisced about his mother’s warning “that
