Chapter 15 - The New British

Summary

This chapter discusses changing conceptions of national identity as Britain entered its postcolonial phase after World War II. Structured around key moments like the attempt to reconfigure the Empire as a ’Commonwealth of Nations’, the famed 1948 arrival of the Empire Windrush with migrants from the Caribbean and the various citizenship laws passed in the wake of increasing migration from Britain’s colonial holdings, the chapter examines the work of writers who became part of the new communities settling into Britain during the post-war period. Pioneering authors E. R. Braithwaite, George Lamming, V. S. Naipaul and Sam Selvon are considered, as well as their literary inheritors, including Linton Kwesi Johnson, Jackie Kay, Hari Kunzru, Andrea Levy, Kamala Markandaya, Caryl Phillips and Benjamin Zephaniah. Ultimately, the chapter reveals how literature has both registered and assertively renegotiated the still incomplete evolution towards a more ecumenical sense of Britishness.