Category Archives: British identity and society

Britons living abroad regain right to vote in UK elections as 15-year rule ends

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Change to franchise brings UK in line with other major democracies which allow lifelong voting rights

An estimated 3 million Britons living abroad for more than 15 years will regain their right to vote in all elections in the UK from Tuesday, ending 20 years of broken promises by successive UK governments.

The end of the so-called 15-year rule means millions more could be enfranchised in time for the next general election, the date of which has yet to be decided by the prime minister, Rishi Sunak.

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Warsan Shire talks to Bernardine Evaristo about becoming a superstar poet: ‘Beyoncé sent flowers when my children were born’

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One is a breakout poet, the other is a Booker-winning champion of Black talent. They swap notes on class, impostor syndrome and the day pop’s biggest star came knocking

When an email from Beyoncé’s office first landed in Warsan Shire’s inbox, she assumed it was some kind of prank. It wasn’t. Beyoncé – the real Beyoncé – was inviting Shire, a 27-year-old British-Somali poet from Wembley, north-west London, to collaborate. The result was the revolutionary 2016 visual album Lemonade, on which Shire is credited with “film adaptation and poetry”; her verses are read aloud between songs. Shire has also since contributed work to Beyoncé’s 2020 film Black is King and wrote a specially commissioned poem, I Have Three Hearts, to announce the singer’s 2017 pregnancy with twins.

But even before Beyoncé came knocking, Shire was starward bound. After a responsibility-laden adolescence, spent combining writing with co-parenting her three younger siblings, Shire published her debut chapbook of poems, Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth in 2011, aged just 23. In 2013, she was appointed the first Young People’s Laureate for London and in 2015, her poem Home became a viral anthem for the refugee crisis. Shire’s first full poetry collection, Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head, comes out next month. In between these professional milestones, she also found time to meet and marry a Mexican American charity worker called Andres, move continents, and have two children.

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Gemma Chan on the truth about her father’s life at sea: ‘He knew what it was like to have nothing’

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The actor knew her father had served in the merchant navy, but it wasn’t until she read about Britain’s mistreatment of Chinese seamen in the 40s that she understood just how much his experiences had shaped her family

“Take the rest of the noodles and the pak choi and you can have it for your lunch tomorrow.” My dad pushed the takeaway containers and their remaining contents across the table towards me.

“I’ve got loads of food at mine, why don’t you and Mum keep it?” I protested. I knew he’d insist I take the leftovers with me. This routine would always play out at the end of family dinners once I’d left home and, this time around, it felt both familiar and oddly comforting – because it had been a while since our last dinner.

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Bernardine Evaristo on a childhood shaped by racism: ‘I was never going to give up’

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My creativity can be traced back to my heritage, to the skin colour that defined how I was perceived. But, like my ancestors, I wouldn’t accept defeat


When I won the Booker prize in 2019 for my novel Girl, Woman, Other, I became an “overnight success”, after 40 years working professionally in the arts. My career hadn’t been without its achievements and recognition, but I wasn’t widely known. The novel received the kind of attention I had long desired for my work. In countless interviews, I found myself discussing my route to reaching this high point after so long. I reflected that my creativity could be traced back to my early years, cultural background and the influences that have shaped my life. Not least, my heritage and childhood

Through my father, a Nigerian immigrant who had sailed into the Motherland on the “Good Ship Empire” in 1949, I inherited a skin colour that defined how I was perceived in the country into which I was born, that is, as a foreigner, outsider, alien. I was born in 1959 in Eltham and raised in Woolwich, both in south London. Back then, it was still legal to discriminate against people based on the colour of their skin, and it would be many years before the Race Relations Acts (1965 and 1968) enshrined the full scope of anti-racist doctrine into British law.

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From Hogwarts to inter-galactic space: how Alfred Enoch’s career rocketed

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He gained cult status in Harry Potter, despite not even wanting to audition, then matured in How to Get Away With Murder. What’s the actor doing now? Playing 1,000-year chess in deep space

At the age of 10, Alfred Enoch was cast as Gryffindor student Dean Thomas in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. While it wasn’t the most prominent role, Thomas was one of the few black or Asian characters in the third-highest-grossing film series ever – and this, allied with his boyish good looks, has lent Enoch cult status among Potterheads. “Not to downplay it,” says Enoch, “but I wasn’t an integral character. I’ve expressed that to people and they still say, ‘Yeah, but I saw you and you looked like me.’”

Enoch was cast after catching the Potter team’s eye during a performance at Shakespeare’s Globe in London. However, he’d earlier declined the chance to audition when producers held an open call at his school. “I didn’t go for Harry Potter in the beginning because I couldn’t think of any black characters,” he says.

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What’s in the England team’s names? English Heritage explains all

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St George’s flags featuring surnames of almost every person in England will fly from heritage sites to cheer on team

Harry Kane can trace his surname back to a word for “warrior”. Declan Rice to “impetuous”. Kieran Trippier to “dance”. Kyle Walker will have to make do with “trampler of cloth in a bath of lye” which, to be fair, was once a very important job.

English Heritage is getting in the football spirit by revealing the origins of the names of the England players. It will also fly a St George’s flag featuring the surname of almost every person living in England at its properties to help cheer on the team before Sunday’s Euro 2020 final against Italy.

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Gilbert and George on their epic Covid artworks: ‘This is an enormously sad time’

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The artists have responded to the pandemic with comic, haunting works showing themselves being buffeted around a chaotic London. They talk about lines of coffins, illegal raves and ‘shameful’ statue-toppling

As they call themselves living sculptures, I can’t resist asking Gilbert and George what they think of all the statue-toppling that took place last year. When I ask for their verdict on the removal of public works that have been accused of celebrating slavery and colonialism, they are sceptical.

“We would call that shameful behaviour,” says George. “And it’s very odd – because normally those statues are totally invisible. Nobody ever looks at them. I remember, very near my home town, there’s a statue of Redvers Buller, the hero of the Boer war, surrounded by dying Zulus and things. And if you asked people in Exeter, ‘Where’s Buller’s statue?’, none of them knew. It’s a bit silly. Rewriting history is very silly.”

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Jackie Kay on Bessie Smith: ‘My libidinous, raunchy, fearless blueswoman’

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As a black girl growing up in 1970s Glasgow, poet Jackie Kay developed a passion for Bessie Smith. In this extract from her new book, she remembers the wild spirit who helped her find her true self

I was adopted in 1961 and brought up in a suburban house in a suburban street in the north of Glasgow. A small, semi-detached Wimpey house. Outside our house is a cherry-blossom tree that is as old as me. It doesn’t seem the most likely place to be introduced to the blues, but then blues travel to wherever the blues lovers go. In my street and in the neighbouring streets to Brackenbrae Avenue, I never saw another black person. There was my brother and me. That was it. The butcher, the baker and the candlestick-maker were all white. (Although I never actually met a candlestick-maker – has anyone?)

So the first time I saw Bessie Smith, it really was like finding a friend. I saw her before I heard her. My father – a Scottish communist who loved the blues – bought me my first double album. I was 12. The album was called Bessie Smith: Any Woman’s Blues and produced by CBS Records ( John Hammond and Chris Albertson; Albertson went on to write her biography). I remember taking the album off him and poring over it, examining it for every detail. Her image on the cover captivated me. She looked so familiar. She looked like somebody I already knew in my heart of hearts. I stared at the image of her, trying to recall who it was she reminded me of.

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Joan Armatrading: ‘I want to make a heavy metal album – with lots of guitar shredding’

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At the age of seven, she flew to Birmingham from Antigua on her own – and became the first globally successful British female singer-songwriter. As she wins the award she once gave to Margaret Thatcher, Joan Armatrading looks back

‘It’s very nice to be honoured,” says Joan Armatrading, down the phone from her home in Surrey. The 69-year-old is talking about receiving this year’s Women of the Year lifetime achievement award, which sees her honoured alongside the likes of child burns survivor Sylvia Mac and Adwoa Dickson, who set up a community choir for young women who survived trafficking. “Whether I measure up is another question.”

She’s joking, of course, but what does the continued existence of the award tell us about where the struggle for equality is in 2020? “It’s maybe not as relevant as it was in 1955,” she says, “when Tony Lothian set it up after being denied admission to a men-only meeting. But women are still doing incredible things in this society, so reward them.”

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Black Sabbath’s Paranoid at 50: potent anthems of working-class strife

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Written off by critics as horror trash from ‘unskilled labourers’, Sabbath’s masterpiece album took beaten-down listeners on a rollercoaster out of their struggles

I first heard Black Sabbath’s second album during the part of my childhood when I was most susceptible to its charms. As a quiet, earnest Catholic school kid – the kind that excitedly whispers “I’m clean!” to themselves after their first confession – it’s not all that surprising that I eventually got bullied. The boys called me names, pushed me into lockers, and dug their pens and markers into my clothes, as if to tell the rest of the pack: “He will let you do this!”

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Christiana Ebohon-Green meets Wunmi Mosaku: ‘It’s exhausting being the non-threatening black woman’

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The TV director and actor talk candidly about how racism is draining, limiting and ingrained. But is leaving to work in the US the answer?

The director Christiana Ebohon-Green (EastEnders, Call the Midwife, Soon Gone: A Windrush Chronicle) and the actor Wunmi Mosaku, 33, (Luther, End of the F**king World and Misha Green’s upcoming HBO/Sky Atlantic drama series, Lovecraft Country) have met before. In fact, they have worked together, on Ebohon-Green’s Bafta-longlisted short, Some Sweet Oblivious Antidote. They both have fond memories of the sun-dappled shoot by the Thames, with a (mostly black) cast of actors. But not every experience on set has been so joyful. Amid some laughter, a few tears and many weary sighs, they swap horror stories of industry racism, discuss solidarity among black creatives, and the opportunities and risks involved in a move to the US.

CEG: I’ve worked on a lot of mainstream television drama, so I’ve often been the only [black person] on set. For me [having this wider conversation about racism] is a relief. Sometimes, you air issues and people are like: “Oh yeah, we know! We’ve solved that! Can you stop going on?” So I’ve been very careful about what I said and assumed people understood.

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How Covid-19 brought Britain back together | podcast

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After a divisive period dominated by Brexit, the pandemic has brought about a newly fostered spirit of community engagement and everyday heroism

It was the middle of March and, like almost everyone else in the country, Annemarie Plas, from south London, was sitting at home under the new conditions of the coronavirus lockdown. It was then that she had an idea about organising a community clap for NHS workers after seeing something similar in her home country of the Netherlands. Now, every Thursday at 8pm, millions of people head out into the streets to clap and cheer for the people risking their lives on the frontline. She tells Anushka Asthana how one idea became a national outpouring.

The crisis is bringing people together in other ways too. Naveed Khan is using a customised vehicle to deliver food and supplies to vulnerable people across his home city of Bradford. Lucy Welling, an NHS nurse, had her bike stolen as Britain went into lockdown. But followers on social media rallied round and helped find the bike amid several offers of a new one. The episode inspired a new movement, #TourDeThanks, to offer up bikes to key workers. In Nunhead, south London, Claire Sheppard set up Nunhead Knocks to help out those living in isolation. In Sheffield, 23-year-old Sarah-Jane Clark is one of a number of colleagues who moved in to a care home to look after residents safely.

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Rapper Naira Marley: ‘It’s better to have a big bum than qualifications in Nigeria’

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He’s been attacked by pastors and jailed by the authorities. But the outspoken rapper will not be silenced. He talks about his cult-like following – and the weird rules ‘Marlians’ live by

Depending on who you talk to, Naira Marley is either the scourge of the next generation of Nigerians or their saviour. But whoever’s talking, the pop star – arguably the most controversial in Africa – is spoken about in near-mythological tones, which makes his amiability very arresting when we meet in London a few weeks before lockdown.

He arrives flanked by an entourage, photoshoot-ready in a reflective puffer, and oscillates between class clown and deep thought. To some, the 25-year-old’s meteoric rise over the past two years has been sudden: selling out Brixton Academy in three minutes; accruing three million Instagram followers, tens of millions of streams, and a cult-like fandom. But the signs of stardom have always been there.

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‘Sometimes the world goes feral’ – 11 odes to Europe

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As Britain braces itself for the Brexit endgame, leading poets – from Carol Ann Duffy to Andrew McMillan – take the pulse of our fragmenting world

From the collection Kin, Cinnamon Press, 2018

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Johnson pledges to make all immigrants learn English

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Tory leadership contender says English is not first language in ‘too many parts of our country’

Boris Johnson has said there are “too many parts of our country” where English is not spoken as a first language and that he would require all immigrants to Britain to learn English.

At a hustings event for the Conservative leadership race in Darlington on Friday, the former mayor of London praised the capital’s diversity but suggested some communities were not doing enough to integrate into society.

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Summer Rolls review – fascinating tale of Vietnamese family in Essex

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Park theatre, London
A mother’s fierce love lies at the heart of Tuyen Do’s nuanced portrait of a family forging a new life in the UK

A light Vietnamese dish served at a family’s restaurant? Or a sneaky spliff rolled by their unruly daughter? Double meanings lie at the heart of the intriguing Summer Rolls by Tuyen Do. It’s an intimate domestic drama, sketched with compassion and steely honesty, about a family who have left war-torn Vietnam and are struggling to forge a shared future in the safety (or is that boredom?) of Essex.

The shifting dynamics – as slippery as the language that young Mai’s parents struggle to adopt – are fascinating to observe. At the centre of the home (coolly lit by Jessica Hung Han Yun) is the mother, otherwise unnamed and played with a brittle ferocity by Linh-Dan Pham. She is the family’s fulcrum: the one who sets the tone (tense), who holds together the family sewing business (fragile), who later runs the restaurant (success!) and who still, when desperately ill, commands the family with a blazing love that is both frightening and comforting.

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‘I even loved his Twankey’: Dench, Hopkins, Mirren and more on Ian McKellen at 80

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Wild parties, stunning performances, silhouette erections and marrying Patrick Stewart twice. As the actor turns 80, friends including Derek Jacobi, Janet Suzman, Michael Sheen, Bill Condon and Stephen Fry pay tribute

Ian has been been very important in my life, even before we became good friends. When I was a young teen I remember watching Walter on the TV and being hugely affected by it. Then at Rada in the early 90s, I finally saw him live, in Richard III at the National. I was blown away. I remember him doing the opening speech while lighting a cigarette one-handed. It was brilliant, so understated. It exemplified his mastery – and his work ethic. To do something so difficult and complicated and make it look so easy. Ian has an innate sense of theatrical audacity, something I think he shares with Olivier. They both did things that would make the audience gasp self-consciously.

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What does Archie tell us about mixed-race Britain?

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The new royal baby is part of the UK’s fastest growing ethnic group. So what does it now mean to be black?

The arrival of the new royal baby reminds us that not only are mixed-race people the UK’s fastest-growing ethnic group; it also underlines that what it means to be mixed race is changing. Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor will join the ranks of those second-generation mixed-race people who challenge our very perceptions of ethnicity and black identity.

In fact, the changing face of mixed-race Britain is something we barely notice even as we are looking directly at it. Perhaps that is the point. Back in the early 2000s we were vaguely aware that young celebrities, such as the late reality TV star Jade Goody or footballer Ryan Giggs, had a black grandparent. But they rarely discussed it or talked of how they perceived themselves.

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A love song for Europe: the couple who drove 20,000 miles to record 731 tunes

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They put a recording studio in a rickety motorhome and crossed 33 countries – asking strangers to knock out a tearjerker

‘People asked us, ‘Are you crackers?’” says Gemma Paintin. She can see why. Along with fellow Bristol artist James Stenhouse, Paintin spent half of 2018 travelling around Europe in an old motorhome, recording love songs. Their epic trek took in almost 20,000 miles, 33 countries, 46 languages and 731 songs – each sung in their battered mobile studio, mostly by random strangers.

These ranged from a seven-year-old Greek boy singing the Kiss song I Was Made for Lovin’ You (“even the guitar parts”) to MEP Peter Simon, who laid down a German folksong. There was a singing security guard in Madrid and some lads in Leeds who bawled through Robbie Williams’s Angels. This, says Paintin, was “exactly how you’d expect a lad version of Angels to sound”.

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Anish Kapoor: ‘If I was a young Muslim, would I feel angry enough to join Isis? I would at least think about it’

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Britain has gone through the looking glass and the artist’s new show follows it into the abyss. He talks about the upsurge in racism, fighting for Shamima Begum – and his clash with France’s president

At 7.30 on the morning after Britain voted to leave the European Union, Anish Kapoor left his London flat for an appointment with his analyst. On the street, he heard two men talking. “Bet he doesn’t even speak English,” said one. “I turned around and they were talking about me. I was so furious.”

Sir Anish Mikhail Kapoor, CBE, RA, the 65-year-old, Turner prize-winning, Mumbai-born British-Indian artist, who has lived in London since the early 1970s and (though this is hardly the point) speaks better English than most of his countrymen, had woken up in a new land. “Since then permission has been given for difference, rather than being celebrated, to be undermined.”

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