Neil Sinclair

Neil Sinclair (1944 - 2019) was a Welsh historian and writer. He is best known for chronicling the docklands area in Cardiff and its redevelopment in the 1960s.

Sinclair was born in the Tiger Bay area of Cardiff in 1944. He left Wales in his twenties to live in London and later the US, where he studied for a bachelor’s and master’s degree at the University of California, Berkeley. He also travelled within Africa and Mexico. He was highly critical of the redevelopment scheme, describing it in 2016 as a "tragedy", and accusing it of creating a "lacklustre council estate; an architectural monstrosity".

Sinclair was also interested in the African diaspora in Wales. He was influenced by the postwar multi-ethnic community of Tiger Bay, which he described as a 'utopian microcosm of social harmony'.

Sinclair appeared briefly in the 1959 film Tiger Bay when he was still a child in Cardiff, in a scene alongside Hayley Mills.