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- This book is no longer available to purchase from Cambridge Core
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- Online publication date:
- October 2017
- Print publication year:
- 2017
- Online ISBN:
- 9781786948038
- Subjects:
- History after 1945 (General) , History
12th August 2024: digital purchasing is currently unavailable on Cambridge Core. Due to recent technical disruption affecting our publishing operation, we are experiencing some delays to publication. We are working hard to restore services as soon as possible and apologise for the inconvenience. For further updates please visit our website: https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/technical-incident
Between Britain’s imperial victory in the Second World War and its introduction of race-based immigration restriction ‘at home,’ London’s relationship with its burgeoning West Indian settler community was a cauldron of apprehension, optimism, ignorance, and curiosity. The West Indian Generation: Remaking British Culture in London, 1945–1965 revisits this not-quite-postcolonial moment through the careers of a unique generation of West Indian artists that included actors Earl Cameron, Edric Connor, Pearl Connor, Cy Grant, Ronald Moody, Barry and Lloyd Reckord, and calypso greats Lord Beginner and Lord Kitchener. Colonial subjects turned British citizens, they tested the parameters of cultural belonging through their work. Drawing upon familiar and neglected artifacts from London’s cultural archives, Amanda Bidnall sketches the feathery roots of this community as it was both nurtured and inhibited by metropolitan institutions and producers hoping variously to promote imperial solidarity, educate mainstream audiences, and sensationalize racial conflict. Upon a shared foundation of language, education, and middle-class values, a fascinating collaboration took place between popular West Indian artists and cultural authorities like the Royal Court Theatre, the Rank Organisation, and the BBC. By analyzing the potential—and limits—of this collaboration, Bidnall demonstrates the mainstream influence and perceptive politics of pioneering West Indian artists. Their ambivalent and complicated reception by the British government, media, and populace draws a tangled picture of postwar national belonging. The West Indian Generation is necessary reading for anyone interested in the cultural ramifications of the end of empire, New Commonwealth migration, and the production of Black Britain.
"Engaging, informed, sophisticated, lucid, detailed - a worthwhile historical contribution that shows how the present day state of the nation grew from its deep roots in the arts and lives of the postwar years among Caribbean settlers to Britain."
Leon Wainwright, Open
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