Grandson of Essie - Harding Oswald Gaskell

Oswald (Ossie) Harding OJ, CD, QC, Phd.
is well known to Jamaicans as a member
of the Jamaica Labour Party, former
Minister of Justice and Attorney General, and
former president of the Senate. What may be
less well known is that he was president for two
non-consecutive tenures, and that his first
period as a senator (1977–2002) was the longest
continuous tenure in the body’s history.
Many readers will be aware that Harding is a
patron of the arts and dedicated art collector.
Fewer may know that on his retirement from
politics he decided to study philosophy, and that
he was awarded a doctorate (Phd) in that subject
from the University of the West Indies, Mona
campus; or that, above all else, he is a devoted
husband and father, son and grandson – a family
man.
As Henry Lowe notes in his foreword, it is
from this book that “the real Ossie Harding”
emerges; and its pages are “loaded with interesting
and informative anecdotes” which identify its
author as “a rich resource of culture and history”.
Ossie Harding, in short, is a fascinating person,
as his disarmingly honest, humorous, and very
readable autobiography demonstrates.