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...
To many, the idea of Englishness in the twenty-first century feels at best quaint or nostalgic; at worst, reactionary and populist. Englishness is 'Li...
