Why?

A personal web-site like this is inevitably narcissistic, but I hope it has a wider social purpose of making my writing and photography more easily available to anyone who has a serious interest in sociology, politics and culture.  I hope it is specially useful those who are thinking about and developing practice that will support radical social change.

Who?

I was born in 1949 in Northallerton, Yorkshire, UK. I’ve lived in Leeds, UK, since 1968. I formed myself in the varied mileux of loving friends and family, Royal Air Force camps, private and state schools, the University of Leeds’ Sociology Department, and the libertarian revolutionary movements of the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. (I was in Big Flame from 1975 to about 1984.) I have worked in factories (briefly), as an unqualified social worker (even more briefly), in adult and community education, for the Runnymede Trust, for the Harehills and Chapeltown Law Centre (in Leeds), as a freelance journalist and photographer.

My utopian longing continued to guide my work when I became a cultural sociologist at Leeds Metropolitan University in the mid-1990s. I took voluntary redundancy from Leeds Met in 2010, ending my career there as Professor for Community Engagement.  Currently I’m an Emeritus Professor, volunteer, holiday-maker and active grand-dad.

As a volunteer, I work mainly as co-secretary to the Board of the David Oluwale Memorial Association charity in Leeds, known as RememberOluwale. In 2023 we opened Yinka Shonibare’s Hibiscus Rising, for David Oluwale, in the centre of Leeds, near where David was drowned in 1969. I was a Board member of Utopia Theatre, based in Sheffield until 2025. I was a Board member of UK Friends of Abrahams Path, based in the UK but with international links, until 2020. I was on the committee for the Leeds political-cultural discussion group  called Taking Soundings. I helped set up and continue to support the hub site LeedsforChange. I learned a lot from being on the Board of Together for Peace , based in Leeds, from 2010-16. I joined the Labour Party when Jeremy Corbyn became its leader. I lost confidence in him pretty soon afterwards and eventually left the Party in 2026 in protest at Shabana Mahmoud’s hostility to migrants .

I also write and I take photographs.  I co-wrote a book about the political organisation Big Flame published by Merlin Press in 2024. In 2022 I published a biography of Arthur France, the African, Caribbean and British man who started the first West Indian style carnival in Europe and founded the black power movement in Leeds. In 2019 my articles on the Caribbean Carnival (yearning for freedom) and the novels of Caryl Phillips were published. In 2018 I contributed a chapter about David Oluwale to a book edited by Quentin Outram and Keith Laybourn.  A  2017 I co-authored a book on the Leeds West Indian Carnival.

I’m writing on Substack from time to time, and I write book reviews for Writers’ Mosaic You’ll find my photography mainly on my Facebook page and on the RememberOluwale Facebook page. I post some photos on Instagram as @farrar.max.

A summary of my public activity is contained in a curious document called a CV that my university compelled us to write. I keep it fairly up-to-date because it works as a précis of my paid work, my writing and my political engagement. Max Farrar CV 2026

I’m happy to say I’ve lived with Jane Storr since 1971. We married in 2003.  Her love and support has been crucial to all that I’ve done since we met at Apsley Grammar School, in Hemel Hempstead, in 1966. We have two children, Rose (b. 1975) and John (b. 1979), a son-in-law, Guy Dixon. Rose and Guy’s children, Miranda (b. 2006), a grand-son, Robert (b. 2008) have lived around the corner from us since 2007 and bring continuous delight. Anabel Leibovic married our John and their children, Olivia Maria (b. 2011), Don William (b. 2014) and Penelope Rose (b. 2019) bring further joy to Jane and me (even more since they moved to Leeds). Our children and grand-children are busy making their own futures.

Lotta Continua: the struggle goes on.

If you’d like to contact me, please use this email address: maximfarrar@gmail.com