Life and Times of a Very British Man

Kamal Ahmed

Kamal Ahmed's childhood was very 'British' in every way - except for the fact that he was brown. Half English, half Sudanese, he was raised in 1970s London at a time when being mixed-race meant being told to go home, even when you were born just down the road. The Life and Times of a Very British Man makes the case for a new conversation about race in Britain through personal stories, political analysis and passionate belief in the ultimate good of this country - white, black and brown. Kamal recounts the extraordinary circumstances that led to his father, a proud Sudanese scientist, marrying his mother, a grammar-school educated woman from Yorkshire - and the first white person he had ever met. It was a time when wearing a miniskirt was an act of social rebellion, when 'niggers' and 'coloureds' still formed part of the national lexicon and when Enoch Powell's infamous 'Rivers of...