‘Always cracking jokes’: questions raised over Jason Arday’s claim he was non-verbal as a child

Jason Arday wrote that he had been ‘unable to speak until I was 11 years old’. Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi/The Guardian

The story of Jason Arday’s extraordinary rise to becoming the youngest black professor in the history of the University of Cambridge is all the more remarkable for one claim: that he did not learn to speak until just shy of his 12th birthday.

This claim was mentioned in a letter announcing his resignation last week, which came amid mounting questions about his academic work and statements he had made about his past.