October marks Black History Month. When the UK adopted the event in 1987 as part of African Jubilee Year there was a concerted effort to move away from its American origins to highlight how people of African and Caribbean heritage have been a part of British history for centuries, and how their stories have too often faded from general knowledge.

With racist abuse of black English football players marring Euro 2020, the expansion of the Black Lives Matter campaign and organisations rolling out policies aimed at inclusivity, this seems a perfect time to highlight some good paperback reads to help make sense of the issues raised and some historical context.

Black and British by David Olusoga
In Black and British, historian, writer and broadcaster Olusuga reveals the long relationship between Britain and the people of Africa, from Roman times to the 20th Century.

This unflinching read reveals that behind the economic boom and bust of the South Sea Bubble was Britain’s global slave-trading empire, African Legionaries were stationed in Roman Cumbria and Black Britons fought at the battle of Trafalgar and in the trenches of WWI.

There is also an edition for school-age children; Black and British: A Short, Essential History.
The paperback book based on Olusoga’s BBC series A House Through Time is also out now.

The Lonely Londoners by Sam Selvon
Published in 1956, Selvon’s award-winning book is a funny and iconic chronicle of post-war Caribbean migration to Britain.

This slim but influential work encapsulates the romance and disenchantment of an imagined city that was both magnet and nightmare for its new colonial citizens, a promised land that turned out to be an illusion for these young idealists.

Selvon deserves a place with the ‘Angry Young Men’ of the 1950s such as John Osborne and Alan Sillitoe as a chronicler of changing times.

Black Tudors: The Untold Story by Miranda Kaufman
The Tudor period is a favourite of historical fiction and costume dramas. Kaufman’s book tells the stories of 10 significant Africans less well known to us, tracing their tumultuous paths through society; uncovering a rich array of detail about their daily lives and how they were treated.

This was a world where skin colour was less important than religion, class or talent; before the English became heavily involved in the slave trade, and founded the American colonies.

These stories question the traditional narrative that racial slavery was inevitable and that it was imported to colonial Virginia from Tudor England.

Windrush, A Ship Through Time by Paul Arnott
The word Windrush has become associated with the Home Office’s ‘hostile environment’ but East Devon’s Paul Arnott tells the full story of the ship significant for the landing of the first members of the Windrush Generation at Tilbury in 1948 in a wonderfully readable book.

It is an intensely political and revealing narrative, detailing how a ship built in a Jewish-owned shipyard in pre-Nazi Germany, later took Norwegian Jews towards their death in Auschwitz, ferried British soldiers from Indian partition and to combat Mau Mau freedom fighters in Kenya.

Windrush is a fascinating look at 20th-Century history through the life of a single ship.

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
Despite being hailed as a breakthrough, Evaristo’s joint Booker-winning novel was, in fact, her 11th book.

Girl, Woman, Other follows a cast of 12 vivid characters on their personal journeys through society and the last hundred years. They're each looking for something; a shared past, an unexpected future, a place to call home, somewhere to fit in, a lover, a missed mother, a lost father, even just a touch of hope.

One of our book group favourites, Girl, Woman, Other is great for getting a discussion going and is an exuberant read.

Evaristo’s memoir Manifesto: A Rallying Cry to Never Give Up is published on October 7.