Bloody Foreigners: The Story Of Immigration To Britain

Robert Winder

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Review

This remarkable book draws together many stories into a coherent narrative.  Winder traces the story of immigration into Britain from ancient Celts to asylum seekers today.  There is a huge amounty of information as we see how many waves of settlers these islands have absorbed: Romans, Danes, Jutes, Angles, Saxons, Normans, Jews, Germans, Huguenots, Poles, West Indians, Indians, Pakistanis, Chinese, Bosnians…  But the exercise is intriguing also because we see how, in a sense, it is the same story repeated over and over again: initial resistance followed by gradual assimilation.  Scratch an "Englishman" and a bloody foreigner lurks beneath. English displays of xenophobia are not new, and have never been edifying, but Winder makes a good case that our history of assimilating other people is one of our most consistently defining characteristics as a nation, and one to be proud of.  In doing so, he shows how immigrants have been crucial to all our successes.  This is a book that needed writing.  It needs reading too. - review by John de Falbe