Eustace Edward Ricardo Braithwaite (June 27, 1912 – December 12, 2016), publishing as E. R. Braithwaite, was a Guyanese-born British-American novelist, writer, teacher and diplomat best known for his stories of social conditions and racial discrimination against black people. He was the author of the 1959 autobiographical novel To Sir, With Love, which was made into a 1967 British drama film of the same title, starring Sidney Poitier and Lulu. Early life Braithwaite was born in Georgetown, Guyana, on June 27, 1912. Both of his parents had gone to Oxford University and he described growing up surrounded by education, achievement and parental pride. His father was a gold and diamond miner, and his mother was a homemaker. He attended Saint Ambrose Primary School, Queen's College, Guyana, and then City College of New York (1940). During World War II he joined the Royal Air Force as a pilot. He later described this experience in To Sir, With Love as one where he had felt no discrimination based on his skin colour nor ethnicity. He went on to attend Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge (1949), where he earned a master's degree in physics. Career After the war, despite his extensive training, Braithwaite could not find work in his field and, disillusioned, reluctantly took up a job as a school teacher in the East End of London. The book To Sir, With Love (1959) was based on his experiences there. It won an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. To Sir, with Love was adapted into a film of the same title, starring Sidney Poitier. Although the film was a box-office success, many critics, and Braithwaite himself, considered it too sentimental. He also objected to the main character's mixed-race romance being given lower prominence in the film version. In 2007 he said on a BBC Radio 4 programme, To Sir, with Love Revisited, written and presented by Burt Caesar: "I detest the movie from the bottom of my heart." While he was writing his book about the school Braithwaite turned to social work. It became his job to find foster homes for non-white children for the London County Council. This experience resulted in Paid Servant: A Report About Welfare Work in London, published in the UK in 1962. Braithwaite continued to write novels and short stories throughout his long international career as an educational consultant and lecturer for UNESCO. He was the first Permanent Representative of