Red, Red Robin

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.

Alison Light is a full-time writer. She is the author of five books of non-fiction to date and numerous other publications; she is a contributor to the London Review of Books and has written for the Guardian, the New Statesman and the Times Literary Supplement among others. She is a Fellow of the British Academy, of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Royal Historical Society. She is currently an Honorary Fellow in English and History at Pembroke College, Oxford and holds honorary professorships at University College, London and Edinburgh University.

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