It was a real pleasure to hear David Olusoga speaking at an event in Brighton on 30th November. The event was hosted by the University of Brighton in conjunction with City Books (Brighton’s ‘largest and liveliest independent bookshop’). David is a lively and engaging speaker but, best of all, thought provoking. Anyone who has seen him on television, most recently in the BBC series ‘Black and British – a forgotten history’, will know how passionate he is about Black history. He takes a very global view and chose examples that drew out how interconnected the histories of different parts of the world are. He quoted Professor Stuart Hall: ‘we’re here because you were there’.
Afterwards David signed copies of the book that supports the series.
On the train journey home I was reminded of another recent BBC series ‘Back in time for Brixton’, which took a modern Black family and showed them what it was like to be Black in Britain from the time of the Windrush up to the present day. What struck me most forcibly about that series was the massive change that post-war immigration has brought about. Change for the better without a shadow of a doubt in my view. I genuinely wonder whether anything since the industrial revolution has changed the shape of British society in quite such a dramatic way.