Britishness
School Exchange in Luton
There is an air of nervous excitement inside the brightly lit main hall of Luton's Carnival Arts Centre. Thirty children, all year 5 pupils at William Austin junior school in …
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Turban history
British Sikhs' religion requires them to leave their hair uncut, and the turban is the most …
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masala tour
It is a wintry slate grey Sunday morning and inside the sports hall of Canons high school in Edgware, north London, 400 British Indian children are busy packing …
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JB Priestley and Bradford: then and now
this was published in the observer review on 5th july
There is a dead man standing in the centre of Bradford. He stands perfectly still, his flowing overcoat blown back by the wind, clasping a pipe in his hand as his stone-cold eyes appraise the city that stretches out before …
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the undiscovered country
This is a piece I have written which is published in the current issue of The Spectator:
This summer, as a consequence of the credit crunch, rising air fares and a strong euro, more than half of all Britons chose to spend their holidays in this country. Predictably this was …
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last night of the proms
this is from The Guardian 16th September
‘Would you like a flag?” beams a steward, brandishing fistfuls. It is Saturday evening and I am outside the Royal Albert Hall for the Last Night of the Proms where, I have been reliably informed, flag waving is heartily encouraged. I take two …
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Enoch Powell: 40 years on from the rivers of blood speech
It is a bright, blowy Saturday afternoon in Birmingham city centre and I am standing outside the Burlington Hotel, trying to turn back time. Hooded teenagers huddle in groups, shoppers weighed down with bags hurry past the busking saxophonist mournfully playing ‘What a Wonderful World’. How must it all have …
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the white season
British television tends to treat the white working class as one might a wealthy but embarrassing relative: it is both reliant on and rather mortified by it. Perhaps because television remains essentially a middle-class industry, the depiction of white working-class lives can often be almost hateful. See a working-class person …
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pragmatic patriotism
p>Gordon Brown’s richly symbolic decision to fly the union flag over Downing Street and his recent proclamations in favour of Britishness suggest that he considers patriotism a weapon in the battle for the hearts and minds of British Muslims.The hope is that emphasising our common British …
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‘You’re Muslim- you’ll never be English’
We never talked about it while he was alive, and it’s too late to ask him now, but I imagine that my father arrived in Britain with a mixture of fear and hope. It was nearly 40 years ago; he was leaving the sunshine of Karachi, a wife and young …
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