Here are 100 books that Black and British fans have personally recommended if you like
Black and British.
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As an attorney, former TV broadcaster, and workplace consultant, I’ve devoted my career to empowering women and confronting systemic inequities. My passion stems from personal experience navigating the complexities of workplace harassment, which inspired me to write my book and guide others through similar challenges. I am continually drawn to books that illuminate the hidden power structures and offer practical tools for resilience, empowerment, and self-advocacy. The works on this list have profoundly shaped my perspective, providing inspiration and clarity in both my professional and personal journey. I hope they resonate with you as deeply as they have with me.
This book completely reframed how I see the world. Perez dives into the pervasive gender data gaps that impact everything from workplace policies to public health. Her meticulous research and compelling examples made me realize how much of our world is designed without women in mind. It’s equal parts infuriating and enlightening, and it left me determined to question systems that perpetuate inequality.
This book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the hidden ways gender bias shapes our lives.
Winner of the 2019 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award Winner of the 2019 Royal Society Science Book Prize
Data is fundamental to the modern world. From economic development, to healthcare, to education and public policy, we rely on numbers to allocate resources and make crucial decisions. But because so much data fails to take into account gender, because it treats men as the default and women as atypical, bias and discrimination are baked into our systems. And women pay tremendous costs for this bias, in time, money, and often with their lives.
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
As a child, I was an avid reader. However, I noticed none of the characters I read about looked like me. As a Black girl growing up in London, I yearned for stories that reflected my experiences. Thankfully, by the time I was a teenager, I was able to immerse myself in books written by some amazing African American authors. There was still something missing on my reading list, though. The stories of Black people who lived where I did, especially those from the past. Fast forward to now, and as an author of historical fiction, my passion is telling, writing, and highlighting ‘forgotten’ stories.
I like how this book is both personal and factual in assessing Britain’s imperial past. I’ve always loved this author’s work, and she said some lovely things about my novel The Attic Child.
Her writing really makes you think about the subject matter and want to find out more...
From Afua Hirsch - co-presenter of Samuel L. Jackson's major BBC TV series Enslaved - the Sunday Times bestseller that reveals the uncomfortable truth about race and identity in Britain today.
You're British.
Your parents are British.
Your partner, your children and most of your friends are British.
So why do people keep asking where you're from?
We are a nation in denial about our imperial past and the racism that plagues our present. Brit(ish) is Afua Hirsch's personal and provocative exploration of how this came to be - and an urgent call for change.
As a child, I was an avid reader. However, I noticed none of the characters I read about looked like me. As a Black girl growing up in London, I yearned for stories that reflected my experiences. Thankfully, by the time I was a teenager, I was able to immerse myself in books written by some amazing African American authors. There was still something missing on my reading list, though. The stories of Black people who lived where I did, especially those from the past. Fast forward to now, and as an author of historical fiction, my passion is telling, writing, and highlighting ‘forgotten’ stories.
This gorgeous book was one of the first mainstream stories I had seen that addressed the Black presence during World War 2.
Although it was released a good few years before my first historical fiction novel was published, reading it surely planted those early seeds for my later books. Of bringing untold Black British stories to light. To remind us all that history has been whitewashed and so many untold stories exist.
Hortense shared Gilbert's dream of leaving Jamaica and coming to England to start a better life. But when she at last joins her husband, she is shocked by London's shabbiness and horrified at the way the English live. Even Gilbert is not the man she thought he was. Queenie's neighbours do not approve of her choice of tenants, and neither would her husband, were he there. Through the stories of these people, Small Island explores a point in England's past when the country began to change.
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I’ve been fascinated by British colonial history for decades. Learning little about it as a child, I was shocked to learn, as a university student, how little I’d been taught about the British Empire at school. So, I set out to study it. Inevitably, this academic interest later combined with my fondness for country walking. I once trekked 1000 miles from the tip of Scotland–John O’Groats–to the southernmost part of England, called Land’s End. This took me 2 months. I’ve since explored the UK countryside’s colonial past in a humane history book called The Countryside, recounting my rambles through these lovely landscapes with ten walking companions.
I love this book because it describes Sanghera’s personal journey into the history of the British empire, something he barely learned about in his school lessons in the UK.
The book is great because it doesn’t assume prior knowledge about the topic, so it goes over some basics that are easy to miss. In places, it’s funny; in places, it's sad, but the best thing about Empire is its feel for narrating a good story and being transparent about some of the personal feelings that this history brought up for the author
WINNER OF THE 2022 BRITISH BOOK AWARD FOR NARRATIVE NONFICTION
***THE BOOK THAT INSPIRED THE CHANNEL 4 DOCUMENTARY 'EMPIRE STATE OF MIND'*** THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
'The real remedy is education of the kind that Sanghera has embraced - accepting, not ignoring, the past' Gerard deGroot, The Times _____________________________________________________
EMPIRE explains why there are millions of Britons living worldwide. EMPIRE explains Brexit and the feeling that we are exceptional. EMPIRE explains our distrust of cleverness. EMPIRE explains Britain's particular brand of racism.
Strangely hidden from view, the British Empire remains a subject of both shame and glorification. In his bestselling…
I’ve been fascinated by British colonial history for decades. Learning little about it as a child, I was shocked to learn, as a university student, how little I’d been taught about the British Empire at school. So, I set out to study it. Inevitably, this academic interest later combined with my fondness for country walking. I once trekked 1000 miles from the tip of Scotland–John O’Groats–to the southernmost part of England, called Land’s End. This took me 2 months. I’ve since explored the UK countryside’s colonial past in a humane history book called The Countryside, recounting my rambles through these lovely landscapes with ten walking companions.
This book is a great guide to life in hard times. What struck me about it is that there is all sorts of wisdom in here that is less familiar to us than the most famous of Dr. King’s speeches. Here, you can see the old seeds of modern-day culture wars and some excellent and brave recommendations on how to deal with them.
The book could have been written yesterday, always a great test of enduring insight.
The classic collection of sixteen sermons preached and compiled by Dr. King
As Dr. King prepared for the Birmingham campaign in early 1963, he drafted the final sermons for Strength to Love, a volume of his best-known homilies. King had begun working on the sermons during a fortnight in jail in July 1962. Having been arrested for holding a prayer vigil outside Albany City Hall, King and Ralph Abernathy shared a jail cell for fifteen days that was, according to King, ‘‘dirty, filthy, and ill-equipped’’ and “the worse I have ever seen.” While behind bars, he spent uninterrupted time preparing…
I’ve been fascinated by British colonial history for decades. Learning little about it as a child, I was shocked to learn, as a university student, how little I’d been taught about the British Empire at school. So, I set out to study it. Inevitably, this academic interest later combined with my fondness for country walking. I once trekked 1000 miles from the tip of Scotland–John O’Groats–to the southernmost part of England, called Land’s End. This took me 2 months. I’ve since explored the UK countryside’s colonial past in a humane history book called The Countryside, recounting my rambles through these lovely landscapes with ten walking companions.
This is a well-written book with a strong sense of history’s human stories. It is painstakingly researched—but beautifully narrated—and based on archival evidence to explore the lives of Africans in Britain during the Tudor period.
It tells so many diverse stories about Black divers, servants, circumnavigators, and so much more. Teachers have since used this book to update their school lessons about the Tudor period.
A Book of the Year for the Evening Standard and the Observer
A black porter publicly whips a white Englishman in the hall of a Gloucestershire manor house. A Moroccan woman is baptised in a London church. Henry VIII dispatches a Mauritanian diver to salvage lost treasures from the Mary Rose. From long-forgotten records emerge the remarkable stories of Africans who lived free in Tudor England...
They were present at some of the defining moments of the age. They were christened, married and buried by the Church. They were paid wages like any…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
My father died when I was a young child, and so my uncle became the nearest I had to a father figure. He was a trade unionist and strongly committed to social justice. I was so enamoured by the compassion he showed towards socially disadvantaged people and the struggles they encounter through no fault of their own that I became an advocate for social justice from an early age. That passion for fairness and inclusion has stayed with me throughout my career and therefore figures strongly in my writings and, over the years, in my teaching, training, and consultancy work.
When it comes to the literature relating to social justice, class, race, and gender tend to take the lion’s share of interest and coverage.
This means that ageism, which can have devastating effects on older people's lives is often left out of the picture. And, even when it is covered, it tends to be addressed in theoretical and policy terms, with little or nothing said about the practical challenges of tackling ageism on a day-to-day basis.
This book is the clear exception. The author is evidently a passionate champion of treating older people with dignity as part of an overall strategy of anti-ageist practice. Clearly written, with a lovely blend of theory and practice, this is a gem of a book.
Caring effectively for older people is a major challenge in today’s pressurized times. Making sure that each and every older person is treated with dignity and as a unique individual in their own right is a fundamental requirement for good practice. This manual, written by a highly experienced former nurse, care manager, social worker, tutor and researcher, provides a foundation of knowledge and practical guidance for building best practice. If you work in any aspect of providing care for older people, then this manual will be an invaluable learning resource to guide your practice.
My father died when I was a young child, and so my uncle became the nearest I had to a father figure. He was a trade unionist and strongly committed to social justice. I was so enamoured by the compassion he showed towards socially disadvantaged people and the struggles they encounter through no fault of their own that I became an advocate for social justice from an early age. That passion for fairness and inclusion has stayed with me throughout my career and therefore figures strongly in my writings and, over the years, in my teaching, training, and consultancy work.
After football and music, my first love was languages. From an early age I became fascinated with how language works and how significant it is in shaping social life and interpersonal relationships.
That fascination still remains, but what I find particularly interesting (and significant) is the relationship between language and social justice. Unfortunately, this has been hijacked by the simplistic ‘political correctness’ approach that seeks to simply ban certain words. The reality is far more complex and nuanced than this, and so a much more sophisticated approach is needed.
That’s where this excellent book comes in. It provides a very helpful analysis of how language and society interact in a variety of ways.
In this third edition of the bestselling classic textbook, Martin Montgomery explores the key connections between language and social life. Guiding the student through discussions on child language, accent and dialect, social class and gender, as well as a number of other topics, Montgomery provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the function of language in modern society.
This third edition includes:
new sections on dialect levelling and estuary English; hip-hop and rapping as anti-language and 'crossing' between Creole, Panjabi and South Asian English
new material on the Gulf War and the 'War on Terror'
discussions on language in internet…
My father died when I was a young child, and so my uncle became the nearest I had to a father figure. He was a trade unionist and strongly committed to social justice. I was so enamoured by the compassion he showed towards socially disadvantaged people and the struggles they encounter through no fault of their own that I became an advocate for social justice from an early age. That passion for fairness and inclusion has stayed with me throughout my career and therefore figures strongly in my writings and, over the years, in my teaching, training, and consultancy work.
I’ve long been suspicious of the medical model of mental health.
My own work with people struggling with mental health challenges convinced me that simply regarding them as ‘mentally ill’ and in need of medication was not helpful. The reality I encountered was far more multidimensional, with psychological, social, and spiritual matters being just as important as the biological, if not more so.
This edited collection brings together critical analyses of the medical model from a wide range of authors. The basic message is that we need to rethink conceptions of mental illness and recognize that there is immense potential for discrimination and oppression if these wider aspects are not taken into consideration.
Anyone who doubts the wisdom of the medical model will find this book very informative.
The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Mental Health offers the most comprehensive collection of theoretical and applied writings to date with which students, scholars, researchers and practitioners within the social and health sciences can systematically problematise the practices, priorities and knowledge base of the Western system of mental health. With the continuing contested nature of psychiatric discourse and the work of psy-professionals, this book is a timely return to theorising the business of mental health as a social, economic, political and cultural project: one which necessarily involves the consideration of wider societal and structural dynamics including labelling and deviance, ideological…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
As a child, I was an avid reader. However, I noticed none of the characters I read about looked like me. As a Black girl growing up in London, I yearned for stories that reflected my experiences. Thankfully, by the time I was a teenager, I was able to immerse myself in books written by some amazing African American authors. There was still something missing on my reading list, though. The stories of Black people who lived where I did, especially those from the past. Fast forward to now, and as an author of historical fiction, my passion is telling, writing, and highlighting ‘forgotten’ stories.
Charles Ignatius Sancho, born in 1729 was the first Black man to vote in Britain. His famous painting as well as his writings have been readily available for some time now. However, what this book has done is weave these stories into a narrative that is part fact, part fiction. I like to do the same with my own novels as in ‘filling the blanks of someone’s life’. The life of a person who once lived and who once breathed.
I love that this novel includes scenes set in Georgian London. A Black man in such a historical setting is not a familiar subject of books!
