Red, Red Robin

Hardback

A History of Myself

To many, the idea of Englishness in the twenty-first century feels at best quaint or nostalgic; at worst, reactionary and populist. Englishness is 'Little Englandism' and not much else. But for prize-winning memoirist Alison Light, the experience of growing up in post-war Portsmouth as the country underwent a phenomenal period of reconstruction fostered an inescapable sense of being solely and completely English in identity.

In Red, Red Robin, a sequel of sorts to 2014's Samuel Johnson Prize-nominated Common People, Light mixes social history, memoir and reverie as she documents the changing face of England from the 1950s to 1970s, resisting both nostalgia and disavowal. The book asks whether we can ever keep our strong attachments to our places of origin, paying our respects to our histories and beliefs without romanticisation or invention.

In this lyrical, analytical and politically engaged family history, one of our most compelling writers explores one of our most deeply contested notions with both rigorous scholarship and a 'child's eye view' evoking wonder and beauty.