Homecoming: Voices of the Windrush Generation

A BBC Radio 4 Book of the WeekHopeful and angry joyful and tear-jerking GraziaAn extraordinary and compelling book Daily TelegraphPrickles with beautiful comic and brutal details Observer Homecoming draws on over a hundred first-hand interviews archival recordings and memoirs by the women and men who came to Britain from the West Indies between the late 1940s and the early 1960s. In their own words we witness the transition from the optimism of the first post-war arrivals to the race riots of the late 1950s. We hear from nurses in Manchester; bus drivers in Bristol; seamstresses in Birmingham; teachers in Croydon; dockers in Cardiff; inter-racial lovers in High Wycombe and Carnival Queens in Leeds. These are stories of hope and regret of triumphs and challenges brimming with humour anger and wisdom. Together they reveal a rich tapestry of Caribbean British lives. Homecoming is an unforgettable portrait of a generation which brilliantly illuminates an essential and much-misunderstood chapter of our history.