JEAN RHYS, First Steps [1979]
C L. R. JAMES, Bloomsbury: An Encounter with Edith Sitwell [1932]
GEORGE ORWELL, Confessions of a Down and Out [1933]
E. R. BRAITHWAITE, From Choice of Straws [1965]
LAWRENCE DURRELL, London at Night [1969]
DORIS LESSING, In Defence of the Underground [1987]
WILSON HARRIS, From The Angel at the Gate [1982]
SAMUEL SELVON, From The Lonely Londoners [1956]
JAMES BERRY, ‘From Lucy: Englan’ Lady’ [1982]; ‘From Lucy: Carnival Wedd’n’, 1981’ [1982]
RUTH PRAWER JHABVALA, From Three Continents [1987]
GEORGE LAMMING, A Voyage [1954]
PETER PORTER, An Ingrate’s England [1989]
J. G. BALLARD, First Impressions of London [1993]
EVA FIGES, From Little Eden: A Child at War [1978]
V. S. NAIPAUL, The Journey [1987]
PENELOPE LIVELY, From Oleander, Jacaranda [1994]
ANITA DESAI, From Bye-Bye, Blackbird [1971]
CHRISTOPHER HOPE, From Darkest England [1996]
SHIVA NAIPAUL, Living in Earl’s Court [1984]
SALMAN RUSHDIE, A General Election [1983]
ABDULRAZAK GURNAH, From Pilgrim’s Way [1988]
GEORGE SZIRTES, The Child I Never Was [1986]; Assassins [1983]
TIMOTHY MO, From Sour Sweet [1982]
WILLIAM BOYD, Fly Away Home [1997]
LINTON KWESI JOHNSON, Inglan is a Bitch [1980]
ROMESH GUNESEKERA, From Reef [1994]
KAZUO ISHIGURO, From The Remains of the Day [1989]
DAVID DABYDEEN, London Taxi Driver [1988]
MICHAEL HOFMANN, The Machine That Cried [1986]
BEN OKRI, Disparities [1986]
Acknowledgements
Editor’s Note
This anthology would have been impossible for me to complete without the help of two remarkable people, Ming Nagel and Nalini Jones, who worked tirelessly on this project, searching libraries, following my often badly expressed hunches, deciphering my always impossible handwriting and dealing with many publishers, agents and authors. I am fortunate to have had the experience of working with two such assistants and I thank them wholeheartedly.
I have sought the advice and enlisted the help of various other people during the editing of this volume. My thanks to Helen Anglos, Fiona Carpenter, Fredéric Constant, Maura Dooley, Margaret Drabble, Georgia Garrett, Michael Gorra, Antony Harwood, Maya Jaggi, Suzannah Lucas, the librarians of Amherst College, Julian Loose, Frank Pike, Bill Pritchard, Jo Shapcott and Marina Warner.
Preface
I conceived of this anthology during a period as writer-in-residence at a university in Singapore. The head of my department asked me to give a lecture, and among the suggested topics was a familiar one. Would I be interested in addressing the phenomenon of the recent wave of writing by ‘outsiders’ to Britain which is ‘reinvigorating’ the canon? I bristled at the implication that before this ‘recent wave’ there was a ‘pure’ English literature, untainted by the influence of outsiders. To my way of thinking, English literature has, for at least 200 years, been shaped and influenced by outsiders.
As I thought more about this subject, it occurred to me that to compile and edit an anthology of writing by British writers who are outsiders in the most clear-cut way – those not born in Britain – might illustrate my point. I left Singapore and returned to Britain, whereupon I began to collect and read works by authors who fitted my brief. An organizing theme soon began to emerge around the vexing question of ‘belonging’. The once great colonial power that is Britain has always sought to define her people, and by extension the nation itself, by identifying those who don’t belong. As a result, Britain has developed a vision of herself as a nation that is both culturally and ethnically homogeneous, and this vision has made it difficult for some Britons to feel that they have the right to participate fully in the main narrative of British life.
The truth is, of course, that Britain has been forged in the crucible of fusion – of hybridity. Over the centuries, British life at all levels – its royal family, the nation’s musical heritage, Parliament, military, sport, entertainment and the City – has been invigorated and to some extent defined by the heterogeneous nature that is the national condition. However, in the face of overwhelming evidence, the mythology of homogeneity not only exists but endures. Daniel Defoe’s late-seventeenth-century poem ‘The True-born Englishman’ defines the mongrelized ‘mixtures’ that underpin the heterogeneous British tradition.
The Scot, Pict, Briton, Roman, Dane, submit,
And with the English-Saxon all unite;
