KINGSTON, Jamaica – (Today), Barbados will celebrate National Heroes Day, and highlighting the activities will be the presentation of the prestigious Clement Payne Appreciation Award to legendary Barbadian novelist, political commentator, essayist, and public intellectual, Mr George Lamming, appropriately marking the 60th anniversary of the publication of his seminal work, In the Castle of My Skin. The octogenarian still exudes the physical profile of a 1960s Black Power advocate and is possessed of the erudition and razor-sharp mind that has been emblematic of his long and distinguished career. Mr Lamming, one of the Caribbean's pioneering novelists and essayists, started as a teacher and went to England in 1950 where he became a broadcaster with the BBC Colonial Service. In the Castle of my Skin, his first novel, was published in 1953 and achieved renown when it won the Somerset Maugham Award. Mr Richard Wright wrote the introduction to the US edition.