26 May 2021
Ranette Prime: Food and Identity in Britain
This is the fifth in a series of blogs coming out of the Eccles Centres’ Caribbean Foodways oral history project. Identifying connections between participants’ stories and collection items, each blog explores one of the nine oral history interviews that will be deposited in the Sound Archive.
*** Please note that certain browsers do not support the audio clips - read and listen on Chrome or Internet Explorer to ensure that the clips play in full ***
This blog is about Ranette Prime, a London-based lawyer and food enthusiast who set up her own supper club. Ranette’s parents, Randolph and Lynette Prime, travelled from Trinidad and Guyana to England, in the 1960s, and they have both shaped her love of food. This blog focuses on Ranette’s memories of family trips to Brixton market and life in Sheffield, but you will soon be able to listen to his full interview via the British Library’s Listening and Viewing Service.
Sundays at Brixton Market
On Sunday mornings, Ranette’s family would pack into a car and drive from West Sussex to Brixton Market, where they would spend the whole day stocking up on supplies of food, beauty products and incense. Ranette’s memories of the market speak to Brixton as a hub of Black Britain – a place where were nods and smiles were signs of ‘community acknowledgement’. Trailing round the market for hours, getting the best eddoes or the cheapest sarsaparilla, and make-up from Island Beauty, Ranette and her siblings were rewarded with patties at the end of the ‘marathon’ shopping trip. Ranette’s recollection that she ‘felt very at home in Brixton’ echoes Brixton’s history as a place of Caribbean settlement, political activism, commerce and leisure.
These articles from the 1960s reflect this sense of Brixton as the heart of Black Britain at the time. Founded in 1960, Tropic magazine was a popular glossy magazine that described itself as the ‘voice of 250,000 coloured people in Britain.’1 ‘Living in Brixton’ tells its readers that if you ‘Walk through the famous Brixton market any Saturday and you are bound to hear the lilt of West Indian and West African voices mingled with cockney accents.’ On the next page, the article pinpoints the highlights of living in Brixton, including a photograph of Claudia Jones at the West Indian Gazette offices that were housed at 250 Brixton Road – above Theo Campbell’s record shop – and Leslie and Chris Morgan’s Caribbean Bakeries Limited. Founded a few months after Tropic’s demise, Flamingo magazine was similar in terms of content and style. This 1963 article, ‘West Indians in Brixton Market’ explains the increasingly profitability of ‘West Indian food, vegetables and tinned goods’ alongside recognising its importance as a ‘meeting place’. As Ranettes’ interview reveals, her memories of Brixton market in the 1980s and 1990s are in dialogue with these longer histories that have been documented in Britain’s Black magazines.2
Moving to Sheffield
‘Over the years we established a bit more of an identity in Sheffield … we had pockets … but it took a while’
At the age of 11, Ranette and her family moved to Sheffield. As they built a new life, they sought out ‘parallels’ to what they had in London. Interestingly, the parallels that they were seeking were often food-based – they searched for familiar ingredients and flavours. In this clip, Ranette remembers a man called Martin who delivered Caribbean food to families across Sheffield. His van was an ‘Aladdin’s cave’ that was filled with fresh and dry foodstuffs, such as plantains, cakes and hardo bread. By the early 2000s Martin had opened a ‘massive’ shop in Pitsmoor, on the outskirts of Sheffield. This story of Martin’s evolution from his travelling van to a permanent shop captures Ranette’s broader reflections on adaptation and community-building, as Sheffield’s Black Caribbean communities established themselves.
Establishing a sense of community in Sheffield was a gradual process and one that was at times complicated by questions of food and identity. ‘Surrounded by fish and chip shops’, Ranette expresses a sense of fascination with their signification of Britishness. This beautiful ‘Fried Fish and Chipped Potatoes’ rhyme, that was printed on greaseproof paper and published in Leeds, in 1906, embodies this quintessential ‘British’ fish and chips narrative that Ranette speaks of. However, these positive, wholesome and British connotations were a relatively recent development in the early 20th century. In Fish and Chips: A History, Panikos Panayi explains how Sephardic Jewish refugees brought traditions of frying fish to Britain in the late 19th century. Panayi interprets records of people complaining about the “nauseous odour”, as symbolising denigrating associations between fried fish and London’s poor areas, where Jewish communities settled.3 So, interestingly, Britain’s ‘national dish’ tells a history of migration, othering and adoption.
As well as eating fish and chips, Ranette remembers asking her mum to make that ‘British stuff … peas and fish fingers’, when her school friend came over to the house. Reflecting on her associations of certain foods, like shop bread and fish and chips, with British culture, Ranette remembers her young self, feeling a need to identify with these foods. This anecdote of culinary elasticity signifies the multiple ways in which people, especially children, self-consciously shape their identities.
‘I lived in little Trinidad as it were, and little Guyana at home’
As Ranette explains, her approach to cooking, whether at home or for her supper club (Eats and Beats), has been profoundly influenced by the food of her parents i.e. the food of Trinidad and Guyana. However, other cuisines, from Turkish to Korean, have also shaped Ranette’s tastes and cooking style. Speaking about the her parents, she describes a ‘common ground in their culture that Guyanese and Trini … complement each other really well’ – a harmony of tastes that is born out the region’s complex history. Phoulorie, which is widely eaten in Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana, reflects this ethnic and culinary crossover that is in part a result of their respective Indo-Caribbean populations. There is a basic recipe for phoulorie in E. Phyllis Clark’s West Indian Cookery book , but I think that Ranette’s recipe, which she has generously shared, sounds far tastier than Clark’s version which seems under spiced. Why not try it at home this weekend?
Thank you Ranette Prime for sharing your memories and thoughts with me.
Naomi Oppenheim is the project lead on Caribbean Foodways in her role as the Caribbean Collections and Community Engagement Intern at the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library @naomioppenheim
Read the next blog in the Caribbean Foodways series - Anselm Berkely: From Field to Shelf to Plate
Read the previous blog in the Caribbean Foodways series - Sandra Agard: An Ode to Ridley Road
References / further reading
- Black London Histories http://www.blacklondonhistories.org.uk/
- Caribbean Market, Brixton, 1961, British Pathé
- Conversation in Sheffield about accent, dialect and attitudes to language, BBC Voices, British Library Shelfmark C1190/28/05
- Flamingo, July 1963, British Library Shelfmark: P.P.5109.bq
- Crossley, Fried fish and chipped potatoes (Leeds, 1906) British Library Shelfmark HS.74/1588
- Loretta’s Kitchen
- Naomi Oppenheim, ‘Popular history in the Black British press: Edward Scobie’s Tropic and Flamingo, 1960-64’, Immigrants & Minorities (2020), 136-162
- Panikos Panaya, Fish and Chips: A History (London: Reaktion Books, 2014). British Library Shelfmark 2016.a.1892
- Sahar Shah, Fish and chips are uniquely British, and so is its hidden migrant history, gal-dem, 1 December 2020
- Shopping, Brixton, 1975, British Pathé
- Ranette Prime interviewed by Naomi Oppenheim, Caribbean Foodways, March 2021 (uncatalogued)
- ‘The Hyper-Regional Chippy Traditions of Britain and Ireland’, Vittles, 30 October 2020
- Tropic, August 1960, British Library Shelfmark P.P.7615.kf.
1. Tropic, March 1960, p.1
2. Naomi Oppenheim, ‘Popular history in the Black British press: Edward Scobie’s Tropic and Flamingo, 1960-64’, Immigrants & Minorities (2020)
3. Panikos Panaya, Fish and Chips: A History (London: Reaktion Books, 2014); Sahar Shah, 'Fish and chips are uniquely British, and so is its hidden migrant history', gal-dem, 1 December 2020
20 May 2021
Sandra Agard: An Ode to Ridley Road
This is the fourth in a series of blogs coming out of the Eccles Centres’ Caribbean Foodways oral history project. Identifying connections between participants’ stories and collection items, each blog explores one of the nine oral history interviews that will be deposited in the Sound Archive.
*** Please note that certain browsers do not support the audio clips - read and listen on Chrome or Internet Explorer to ensure that the clips play in full ***
This blog is about Sandra Agard, a storyteller and author who is currently based at the British Library. Sandra’s parents travelled from Guyana (British Guiana at the time) in the early 1950s and infused their London home with the flavours of Guyana. A life-long Hackney resident, this blog focuses on memories of her parents’ cooking and trips to Ridley Road market but you will soon be able to listen to her full interview via the British Library’s Listening and Viewing Service.
‘Delicious, magical, sumptuous … it’s about stories, journey, tradition … a melting pot of so many influences coming together to make the Caribbean, and that’s what Caribbean food is, it’s history, it’s us, it’s me’
Capturing the magic of Caribbean food, Sandra connects her own life to that of her parents, and the wider history of Guyana and the Caribbean, through recollections of freshly baked bread, chow mein and Guinness punch with hot milk. Dishes like chow mein speak to what Sandra calls Guyana’s ‘melting pot’ history. Those fried noodles stretch back to the period of indentureship, when Chinese labourers transported ingredients, tastes and cooking techniques, as they arrived on ships from Hong Kong, to supplement labour shortages following the abolition of slavery.1
Sandra’s sumptuous memories of delicious and comforting meals speak to nourishment as a form of community building. Throughout the interview, Sandra spoke tenderly about her parents, Evelyn and Cecil Agard. She thanks them for instilling the family with a strong sense of Caribbean identity. From Cecil’s Black Cake – which he laboriously made at Christmas time – to Evelyn’s curries, duffs and roti, interspersed with parties and trips to Speakers’ Corner, the family was raised on a diet of Guyanese delicacies, culture and politics. Families like the Agards are revealing of a bigger story about food, migration and identity. A storyteller herself, Sandra avows the importance of maintaining stories and legacies because these ‘mothers and fathers, grandparents, they sacrificed too much to become invisible’. Her memories of Ridley Road market are just one part of this legacy, and they echo Hackney’s working-class and multicultural heritage.
‘Ridley Road Market, as a child, it was the boom’
Sandra remembers when Ridley Road Market was so busy that ‘you couldn’t move … it was just chock-a-block’. She would go on Saturday mornings with her mother, Evelyn, who was constantly bumping into friends, stallholders and fellow nurses – you could not go ‘two seconds without meeting somebody and standing up for years and talking and talking’. These memories capture the community spirit of one of London’s oldest markets. Whilst official records of Ridley Road date back to 1926, Freddie Sherrif – who was once the market governor – explains that this date refers to the time when stallholders asked the council to regulate it and that the market long predates this. Recorded for the Millennium Memory Bank, Sherrif traces the history of the market, from his grandfather who fought against Oswald Mosley (founder and leader of the British Union of Fascists, 1932-40) to the changing demographics of the surrounding area in the post-war period.
‘that’s why this market’s survived, basically we’ve got a catchment of customers that come from cultures that are market-based … we realise that and we’re very grateful. Where other markets, great markets within London have failed … Ridley Road’s still thriving because of that one reason … The whole world meets here and there’s never any trouble … no more than you would in Harrods’
Freddie Sherrif interviewed by Matthew Linfoot - Millennium Memory Bank BL Shelfmark C900/05075
Both of these interviews – with Sandra and Sherrif – depict the market as a hub of trade, nourishment and comradeship, with its comparative success and longevity resulting from the rich composition of Hackney’s population.
Markets have existed for millennia, to provide goods and services to the surrounding locality and as a space for farmers and artisans to sell their wares. Commissioned by William the Conqueror, in 1085, the Great Domesday Book (1086) recorded details of 13,418 settlements in England – including 50 market towns. From the 12th century, the number of market towns in England increased rapidly; between 1200 and 1349 thousands of new weekly markets were licensed by the Crown.2 These markets are a part of our national heritage, that speak to the everyday histories of food, trade and of family life. Even as the prevalence of street markets decline (in the UK), they continue to be an important part of daily life for many people and cultures across the world. In fact, ‘The Market’ was one of the topics included in Going to Britain?, a guide for prospective Commonwealth voyagers from the Caribbean. Published by the BBC in 1959, the pamphlet was authored by a combination of Caribbean men who were already living in London (including Samuel Selvon, the Trinidadian novelist), political figures and civil servants. It covered several topics, such as the journey, housing and work, in a sometimes humorous but generally stern and condescending tone.
A.G. Bennett’s section on shopping warned future settlers that ‘Fruit dealers hate buyers handling and squeezing things on display.’ This reminds me of Sandra’s anecdote about nurses shopping for provisions – ‘plantains, sweet potatoes and yams’ – on Ridley Road after they had come off the night shift. When the shopkeeper told the nurses off for touching the produce, Sandra thought ‘how dare he?!’ These feelings of anger prompted her to tell ‘him what’s for’ and demand that he show these women, nurses, mothers and customers more respect. These were women that had been recruited by the newly-formed NHS to come to Britain and train as nurses in order to meet the health needs of post-war Britain.3 Sandra remembers that everyone else started to join in, which ‘was just so brilliant’ – it was part of a process of ‘finding their own voice and standing up for themselves’. This is why recording and archiving stories like Sandra’s is so important, because it speaks back to the archive and, in this case, to the politics of assimilation that publications like Going to Britain epitomised.
Nostalgic for the market’s ‘vibrant’ and ‘electric’ feel, Sandra explains that there is now ‘something missing’, which has only been intensified by the global pandemic. Acutely aware of the forces that have intensified the market’s decline, she comments on the fact that Ridley Road is ‘prized land’, as much of Hackney is now. Listing some of Hackney’s diminished or lost markets, like the Waste along Kingsland Road and Roman Road Market, in comparison to thriving Broadway Market, Sandra provides a window onto the fast-changing gentrified landscape of Hackney, through the lifecycle of the market. Much like the Save Ridley Road campaign – for which you will see beautifully painted and printed signs on display in the surrounding area – Sandra proclaims ‘We need our markets’!
Thank you Sandra Agard for sharing your memories and thoughts with me.
Naomi Oppenheim is the project lead on Caribbean Foodways in her role as the Caribbean Collections and Community Engagement Intern at the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library @naomioppenheim
Read the next blog in the Caribbean Foodways series - Ranette Prime: food and identity in Britain
Read the previous blog in the Caribbean Foodways series - Charlie Phillips: The Story Behind Smokey Joe's Diner
References / further reading
- 'Great Domesday Book', Anglo-Saxons Collection Items, British Library
- BBC Caribbean Service, Going to Britain? (London: British Broadcasting Corp., 1959) British Library Shelfmark Andrew Salkey Archive Dep 10310. Box 17
- ‘Black and white photos of pre-gentrification Hackney’, Huck, 12 February 2020
- Flamingo, October 1961, British Library Shelfmark P.P.5109.bq.
- Freddie Sherrif interviewed by Matthew Linfoot - Millennium Memory Bank British Library Shelfmark C900/05075
- Future Hackney
- H. Britnell, ‘The Proliferation of Markets in England, 1200-1349’, The Economic History Review, 34 (1981). 209-221
- Linda McDowell, 'How Caribbean migrants helped to rebuild Britain', Windrush Stories, 4 October 2018
- 'Local storytelling collective to stage public exhibition celebrating Ridley Road', Hackney Citizen, 13 October 2020
- William Lobscheid, Chinese Emigration to the West Indies. A trip through British Guiana undertaken for the purpose of ascertaining the condition of the Chinese who have emigrated under Government contract. With supplementary papers relating to contract labor and the slave trade (Demerara: Royal Gazette Office, 1866) British Library Shelfmark Digital Store 8155.ee.9.(6.)
- P. Lee, Chinese Cookery. A hundred practical recipes with decorations by Chiang Yee (London: Faber & Faber, 1943) British Library Shelfmark 7946.df.32.
- Sandra Agard interviewed by Naomi Oppenheim, Caribbean Foodways, March 2021 (uncatalogued)
- Save Ridley Road
- William Lobscheid, Chinese Emigration to the West Indies (Demerara: Royal Gazette Office, 1866)
- R. H. Britnell, ‘The Proliferation of Markets in England, 1200-1349’, Economic History Review, 34 (1981). 209-221
- Linda McDowell, 'How Caribbean migrants helped to rebuild Britain', Windrush Stories, 4 October 2018
07 May 2021
Joe Williams: ‘the need for flavour’
This is the second in a series of blogs coming out of the Eccles Centres’ Caribbean Foodways oral history project. Identifying connections between participants’ stories and collection items, each blog explores one of the nine oral history interviews that will be deposited in the Sound Archive.
*** Please note that certain browsers do not support the audio clips - read and listen on Chrome or Internet Explorer to ensure that the clips play in full ***
This blog is about Joe Williams, the Leeds-born arts and heritage activist who researches the historic African presence in Yorkshire. This blog focuses on Joe’s memories of Leeds West Indian Carnival and his historical perspective on Caribbean food but you will soon be able to listen to his full interview via the British Library’s Listening and Viewing Service.
In Jamaica, tamarind season refers to a period of scarcity and hardship before the harvest. Invoking this in her first published collection of poetry, Tamarind Season (1980), Lorna Goodison expresses strength and optimism in face of suffering. Joe Williams echoes this motif of struggle and resilience throughout this recollections and understandings of Caribbean foodways, from Yorkshire to West Africa.
The fruit itself – what Joe calls ‘packaged sweets in nature’ – also connects Joe’s story to Goodison’s poem. In this clip, Joe recalls his sister joining the family in Leeds, from Jamaica, in 1969 and bringing fresh tamarind pods wrapped in newspaper. Joe’s evocative description of the lip-pursing – ‘makes you stand up’ – dark reddish-brown fruit provides a window onto the numerous delectable, novel and familiar items that would have been pulled out of tightly packed suitcases and trunks, as people came to join already-settled family members and friends in Britain.
The occurrence of siblings joining partially established families in Britain was common; families that been separated by the Atlantic’s economic and historic waves, what some historians have referred to as the ‘second Middle Passage’.1 Joe’s mother, Birdie Williams, a seamstress from Jamaica who had 10 children in Trench Town, Kingston, came to Britain alone in 1960. Joe locates his mother’s story as a ‘rare insight into the Windrush narrative’ that puts a spotlight on those women who bravely travelled alone ‘to create opportunities for their family’. Throughout the 1960s, Birdie’s husband and children joined her and Joe in Leeds – realising her dream ‘to get her children out of terrible conditions in the ghettoes of Jamaica, which were a legacy of the Transatlantic Slave Trade’.
In Andrea Levy’s Small Island (2004), the award-winning novel about post-war Caribbean migration, there is a similar narrative around food and arrival. When Hortense arrives in London to join her husband Gilbert, Kenneth – a fellow Caribbean settler – enquires about the contents of her luggage:
‘So you tell me she jus’ come from home? You know what she have in that trunk?
‘No, man.’
‘Come, let us open it. Mango fetching a good price. You think she have rum? I know one of the boys give me half his wage to place him tongue in a guava.’2
Whilst this conjures senses of yearning for the familiarity of home through foodstuffs, like Joe’s story, it evokes the personal and small-scale journeys of Caribbean produce, in pockets and suitcases.
Leeds West Indian Carnival
The longest running West Indian outdoor carnival started in Chapeltown, Leeds, in 1967. As Joe explains, Leeds’ West Indian population has a majority of people from St Kitts and Nevis – so Leeds Carnival reflects the unique cultural practices of these islands, such as Christmas Sports.3 Becoming more conscious as a teenager, Joe found his own way to carnival, describing it as a ‘welcoming and inclusive’ space where eclectic Caribbean cultures were shared.
Carnival marked an ‘opportunity to introduce people to the food of the West Indies’ from roasted corn to homemade patties. Evoking the sights, sounds and smells of carnival, Joe recalls a man with a machete chopping green coconuts. The journey of the coconut from Southeast Asia to the Americas, and its symbolic place at Leeds West Indian Carnival, reflects the complexities of Caribbean foodways. The coconut was introduced to the Americas as part of the Columbian exchange in the early colonial period, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. J. W. Bennett’s The coco-nut palm, its uses and cultivation (1836) speaks directly to the transportation of certain plants and foodstuffs across the British empire – a point that Joe echoes in his critical discussion of Kew Gardens' colonial legacies. Bennett’s book embodies practices of extraction, exploitation and disavowal. From the exoticizing narratives of indigenous practices in ‘Ceylon’ to carefree recipes for coconut cocktails, it is, essentially, a planter’s manual for the production of capital, luxury and indulgence during an era of apprenticeship – which was, in practice, an extension of slavery. As Joe’s interview explores, Caribbean food cannot be disentangled from histories of slavery and resistance.
Hospitality in the home
Throughout Joe’s descriptions of culinary commerce, there is a strong sense of resourcefulness, of what he calls ‘the culture of … survival’. This self-sufficiency was manifest in the houses that became social hubs for eating, drinking and playing dominoes, and by the creation of shebeens and blues parties. Drawing links between South African apartheid and the ‘colour bar’ in Britain, this editorial from Tropic highlighted the state’s failure to ‘put an end to the practice of racial discrimination in … public places.’ The exclusion from mainstream opportunities to engage in commercial and leisure practices meant that Caribbean communities had to construct their own spaces of enjoyment and commerce, to make money and experience joy, wherever possible. The fact that food simultaneously produces pleasure and capital means that it is an important arena for diasporic and migrant cultural-commercial production.
What Joe terms as a ‘need for flavour’ in this final clip, helps us to understand why and how the ‘brutality’ of Caribbean history has been ‘made into something beautiful that can be shared with others.’
Thank you Joe Williams for sharing your memories and thoughts with me.
Naomi Oppenheim is the project lead on Caribbean Foodways in her role as the Caribbean Collections and Community Engagement Intern at the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library @naomioppenheim
Read the next blog in the Caribbean Foodways series - Charlie Phillips: the story behind Smokey Joe's Diner
Read the previous blog in the Caribbean Foodways series - Ann Husbands: Black Pudding and Roti at Notting Hill Carnival
References / Further Reading
- Andrea Levy, Small Island (London: Review, 2004) British Library Shelfmark Nov.2005/1369
- Frank L. Mills, Christmas sports in St. Kitts-Nevis: our neglected cultural tradition (F.L. Mills : S.B. Jones-Hendrickson, 1984) British Library Shelfmark YA.1988.a.9251
- Gabriel Noble, ‘To what extent is the colonial history of botany realised at Kew Gardens today?’ Medium, 15 May 2015
- Guy Farrar, Tim Smith, Max Farrar, Celebrate! : 50 years of Leeds West Indian Carnival (Huddersfield: Northern Arts Publications, 2017) British Library Shelfmark LC.37.a.1666
- Harriet Walsh, Leeds West Indian Carnival, 1967-2002 (Leeds: Pavillion, 2003) British Library Shelfmark YK.2004.a.1560
- Heritage Corner
- Hilary Beckles, ‘British Trade in Black Labour: The Windrush Middle Passage’, British Library, 15 June 2018
- Joe Williams, interviewed by Naomi Oppenheim, Caribbean Foodways, March 2021 (uncatalogued)
- J. W. Bennett, The coco-nut palm, its uses and cultivation: as adapted for the general benefit in our West Indian and African colonies (London: Sherwood, Gilbert and Piper, 1836) British Library Shelfmark Digital Store RB.23.a.25211
- Lorna Goodison, Tamarind Season: Poems (Kingston: Institute of Jamaica, 1980) British Library Shelfmark X.950/14241
- Tropic, June 1960, p.1 British Library Shelfmark P.P.7615.kf.
- ‘From Caribbean Isles to the British Isles: Home to Home’, The National Caribbean Heritage Museum
- ‘Complete Archive of aware-winning novelist Andrea Levy acquired for the nation’, British Library, 6 Feburary 2020
- Hannah Lowe, ‘An introduction to Andrea Levy’s Small Island’, British Library, 4 October 2018
1. Hilary Beckles, ‘British Trade in Black Labour: The Windrush Middle Passage’, British Library, 15 June 2018
2. Andrea Levy, Small Island (2004), p.22
3. Christmas Sports is an African-derived creolized tradition that begins on Boxing Day and culminates with a carnival on New Year’s Day in St Kitts and Nevis. See Frank L. Mills, Christmas sports in St. Kitts-Nevis: our neglected cultural tradition (F.L. Mills : S.B. Jones-Hendrickson, 1984)
30 April 2021
Ann Husbands: Black Pudding and Roti at Notting Hill Carnival
This is the first in a series of blogs coming out of the Eccles Centres’ Caribbean Foodways oral history project. Identifying connections between participants’ stories and collection items, each blog explores one of the nine oral history interviews that will be deposited in the Sound Archive.
*** Please note that certain browsers do not support the audio clips - read and listen on Chrome or Internet Explorer to ensure that the clips play in full ***
This blog is about Ann Husbands, who was born in Grenada in 1955 and travelled to England in 1972 to pursue a career in nursing. Later on, Ann started her own catering business that has supplied food for high-profile events, such as the celebration for 50 years of Independence at the High Commission for Trinidad and Tobago, in 2012. This blog focuses on Ann’s stories of her parents’ restaurant and trading at Notting Hill Carnival but you will soon be able to listen to her full interview via the British Library’s Listening and Viewing Service.
From bacon and eggs to saltfish souse, the breakfast offering at Green Lantern – the restaurant owned by Victor and Eloise Husbands – signified Grenada’s complex colonial history of domination, exchange and resistance. As Ann Husbands explains, the influence of the ‘English system’ was felt in the classroom and the kitchen, with English nuns for teachers and black pudding for breakfast. Through descriptions of her parents’ restaurant, Husbands evokes a sense of culinary grounding and independence in spite of the English influence, with a strong emphasis on local foods, from fried breadfruit to freshly caught fish – a ‘main staple’ of the Grenadian diet.
Growing up in St. George’s, the capital of Grenada, Ann describes a happy and delicious childhood. She also recalls the joys of eating and learning about roti when staying with her grandparents in Trinidad during the summer holidays. Ann’s eclectic approach to Caribbean cookery, as evidenced by Zenith Cuisine’s impressive list of events, from serving Oil Down at a London 2012 Olympics party1 to Diwali celebrations at the High Commission for Trinidad and Tobago, was in part ‘born out of going to Trinidad on holidays.’
In 1972, Ann travelled to London to train as a nurse at St. Ann’s hospital in Tottenham. Recounting memories of ‘insipid’ food in the canteen, Ann started to cook her own food, using her first wage packet to buy utensils and ingredients. When I asked Ann about the increasing role of food and cooking in her life and her career, she described it as an organic process:
‘in between working and bringing up a family, on my days off I’ll do cooking, and if there was a party at the weekend they’d ask me to come and cook … and so it started that way, gradually and gradually and it just increased.’
In 1980, her Auntie Nellice suggested that they do the Notting Hill Carnival together, which ended up becoming a decades-long endeavour, with Ann having a stall until 2014. They would sell black pudding and roti, which was ‘very popular with Grenadians and Trinidadians, they love black pudding!’ The blood was sourced from the East End and it would then be mixed with barley and seasoning before being stuffed into the ‘runners from the cow’. As the go-to spot for black pudding and roti, and being one of the only traders that was rolling out roti on the spot, customers came ‘year after year’. Therefore, I think it is very likely that the ‘highly seasoned’ black pudding mentioned in the following article, from the 1986 Notting Hill Carnival Magazine and Programme, was referring to theirs. Comparing it to the those ‘purchased at British supermarkets and English summer fetes which makes a mockery of the real thing’, the article warned that ‘Black pudding, Caribbean style, is not recommended for those with weak digestive parts’! Whilst the article’s headline, ‘Exotic Caribbean Foods at Carnival’, is outdated, the article itself provided a broad description of the edible offering, giving credit to the Caribbean’s ‘unique taste’ as a key, though perhaps lesser-recognised, part of Carnival’s appeal.
For years, the black pudding and roti stall was on Thorpe Close, which you can see on the carnival map is between Westway and Tavistock Road. After trading at Thorpe Close for years, the pitch was moved to Cambridge Gardens, which Ann protested. Following this, they were continuously moved – which was just one of the reasons that Ann decided to stop trading in 2014. In response to these forced relocations, Ann’s children, who she describes as ‘growing up’ at carnival, would stand at the old pitch on Thorpe Close and send customers, who were insearch of Ann’s famous black pudding and roti to the new spot. Growing up in Grenada, one of the closest islands to Trinidad – the home of carnival – this culture was part of Ann’s upbringing and heritage, so trading at Notting Hill created a ‘feeling of nostalgia’, it was ‘something that I yearned to hear and to be part of.’ Ann is still a part of Notting Hill, she cooks food for Mas Bands – groups that wear matching costumes and parade through the carnival.2 Driving down early in the morning, she hangs around for a few hours to ‘get a feel, a smell and a taste of what’s going on.’
In crediting the various influences that have shaped her approach to cooking, Ann explains how she authentically navigates the multiple communities and cuisines that make up the Caribbean. Both the settings and flavours of Ann’s food reflect the important relationship between food, diplomacy and celebration. As we can see from her eclectic catering repertoire and the recipes she has generously shared, the tastes of Ann’s childhood continue to shape her cooking and business. Why not try making Ann’s Saltfish Souse at home, or if all the talk of blood sausage is making you feel uneasy why not try Rosamund Grant’s inventive recipe for ‘Vegetarian Black Pudding!
Thank you Ann Husbands for sharing your memories and thoughts with me.
Naomi Oppenheim is the project lead on Caribbean Foodways in her role as the Caribbean Collections and Community Engagement Intern at the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library @naomioppenheim
Read the next blog in the Caribbean Foodways series - Joe Williams: 'the need for flavour'
References / further reading
- Andy Bull, ‘London 2012: Kirani James wins Grenada’s first Olympic gold medal’, Guardian, 7 August 2012
- Ann Husbands interviewed by Naomi Oppenheim, Caribbean Foodways Interview, March 2021 (uncatalogued)
- Kwesi Owusu and Jacob Ross, Behind the Masquerade: the Story of Notting Hiss Carnival, photographs by David A. Bailey, Jacob Ross and Ian Watts (Edgeware: Arts Media Group, 1988) British Library Shelfmark YC.1989.b.671
- ‘Mas Bands’, Notting Hill Carnival
- Michael La Rose, MAS in Notting Hill: Documents in the Struggle for a Representative and Democratic Carnival in 1989/90 (London: New Beacon in association with Peoples War Carnival Band, 1990) British Library Shelfmark YK.1991.a.8850
- Notting Hill Carnival Magazine and Programme, 1985 British Library Shelfmark P.525/715
- Notting Hill Carnival Magazine and Programme, 1986 British Library Shelfmark P.525/715
- Rosamund Grant, Caribbean and African Cookery (London: Virago, 1989) British Library Shelfmark YK.1989.a.5313
1. Andy Bull, ‘London 2012: Kirani James wins Grenada’s first Olympic gold medal’, Guardian, 7 August 2012
2. ‘Mas Bands’, Notting Hill Carnival
22 January 2020
One more step along the road I go: Tracking the first three months of my Chevening Fellowship
My first day in the UK saw me meeting with some individuals at the British Library who are integral parts of my one-year journey. I met with Jody Butterworth, curator for Endangered Archives Programme (EAP), Phil Hatfield (Head Eccles Centre for American Studies), James Perkins (Former Research & PG Development Manager British Library), Kola Tubosun (Chevening Fellow from Nigeria) and Mark Ashe (Chevening Programme officer). I was given a detailed programme overview and a warm welcome to both the British Library and the UK by everyone.
My current role
My journey in libraries began over four year ago. I entered the Library world somewhat by chance. I can safely say that this profession chose me. When I graduated from the University of the West Indies Mona, I was given my first Job at the National Library of Jamaica. I worked as a cataloguer for a year, where I managed serials and legal deposit publications. I later moved up to Special Collections.
Since working in Special Collections, I have had the great pleasure of expanding my skillsets. I not only catalogue but do reference and research work as well. My daily tasks involves me working with manuscripts, maps, photographs, postcards and newspapers. I also help to interface with researchers from all walks of life, which is the very best part of my job.
Why I applied?
I was always looking for ways to make progress both personally and professionally. During a general staff meeting at the NLJ our CEO, Miss Beverly Lashley spoke about the Chevening British Library Fellowship. She spoke briefly on the requirements and stated that the Library would give support to any staff member who applied. After the announcement I logged into my Chevening application portal and looked on the Fellowship option that was in my profile. Prior to Miss Lashley’s announcement I was well on my way in applying for a Chevening scholarship to study in the UK. Ever since I graduated from the UWI I aspired to continue my studies aboard. I had researched many opportunities for studies, however none was as comprehensive as the Chevening awards.
After many weeks of perfecting my essays I submitted two applications one for a Chevening Scholarship and the other for a Chevening Fellowship. Months passed and my anxiety was high, I was however mindful that whatever was for me would always be at the right time. After receiving numerous emails, meetings and interviews I got the life changing news. I was selected as one of 19 Chevening awardees from Jamaica and was the only Fellow.
After receiving the good news I began my preparations to live and work in one of the world’s most diverse countries.
Fellowship Focus
My Fellowship involves working with the Eccles Centre for American Studies and EAP departments. I will be doing research on digitized archives from Latin America and the Caribbean, engaging with local and international archival partners, organising, and promoting the activities of both departments.
Additionally towards the end or immediately after my fellowship I will Identify and liaise with a local partner institution in the Latin America and or Caribbean region to manage an Eccles funded conference.
EAP and Eccles centre Energetic Synergy
One of the most gratifying experiences about my fellowship is that I get the unique opportunity to work with two of the British Library’s best departments. The Endangered Archives programme (EAP) facilitates the digitisation of archives around the world that are in danger of destruction, neglect or physical deterioration. Funding comes from Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin. Since its inception, EAP has provided grants to more than 400 projects in 90 countries worldwide, in over 100 languages and scripts (Endangered Archives Programme).
The Eccles Centre connects users to the British Library’s Americas collections. They facilitate a wide range of programmes and events. Some of which include visiting Fellowships, Writer’s Award and Congress to Campus programme. The centre also compiles study resources designed to help exploration of the British Library's Canadian, American and Caribbean collections.
Both teams have ensured I have the best experience to date. They have facilitated meetings, talks, internal and external events which add to my personal and professional development. For the first time both departments have a common synergy, me.
My work so far
Currently I have two major projects I’m working on. My main project involves an in depth data visualisation of past and present projects in Latin America and the Caribbean undertaken by EAP. I have so far completed the data compilation and will continue to work on the project in the coming year.
The second major project I am working is a Bibliography of Latin America and Caribbean non-book sources before 1950 at the British Library for the centre. This project is enabling me to explore the vast Latin American collections held at the British Library.
While working on the main projects I have also learnt about other gems in the collections. The Cartonera: Latin American cardboard books, the proposition to establish the West India Company in the Stowe manuscript collection and manuscripts related to Texcoco in Mexico are just a few interesting collection items I have explored.
Chevening experience
Undoubtedly none of this would be possible without the Chevening secretariat. The Chevening team namely my programme office Mark Ashe, have been my constant guide. One of the most memorable moments on my fellowship so far was at the recent Chevening Orientation. The session had 1,750 scholars from 141 countries and territories around the world. It was truly a remarkable event.
Chevening also facilitates smaller networking sessions through its tailored events. I had the privilege of attending one such event in Manchester under the theme Cottonpolis: Fashioning the Future. Myself and over 20 scholars received a guided tour of the city of Manchester and had a very engaging session on sustainable fashion at the University of Manchester
Hopes for 2020
It is my hope that throughout the rest of my fellowship I will produce blog posts, articles and multimedia content that will track and highlight the work I am doing. I am also looking forward to the many people I will meet and new places I will visit.
Chantelle Richardson
Chevening Fellowship Awardee - Jamaica 2019/2020
05 August 2019
A Tour of Indigenous London
Above: 'Tee Yee Neen Ho Ga Row, Emperor of the Six Nations' from Add MS 5253.
On July 22nd, the Eccles Centre was pleased to host a group of students from the University of British Columbia’s Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies, who were visiting London as part of their course led by former Eccles Visiting Fellow, Professor Coll Thrush. The plan for the day, however, was a little bit different from our usual student visit days. As part of our work with the Beyond the Spectacle project, we wanted to go beyond the usual collections display and highlight research being done on these collections and how students and members of the public could take a lead role in disseminating the findings of this research.
The day started with some of the Library’s more historic items. The Library’s founder collectors, especially King George III, Sir Hans Sloane and Thomas Grenville, had a strong interest in North America and, as a result, collected significant works relating to the indigenous peoples of Canada, the Caribbean and the United States. A significant part of the Library’s eighteenth-century collections are various materials relating to the ‘Four Indian Kings’ a visiting delegation from the nations of the Mohawk and the Mahican during the reign of Queen Anne. Etow Oh Koam, Sa Ga Yeath Qua Pieth Tow, Ho Nee Yeath Taw No Row and Tee Yee Ho Ga Row journeyed to England and London to make their case for greater support and interest from the monarch and their words were variously recorded and distributed. There were also illustrations made of the delegation, some crude and westernised while others, such as those found in the collection of Hans Sloane and reproduced here, are detailed and vivid. The display also highlighted the breadth of Library collections that speak to the history of contact between indigenous nations, North American colonists and Europeans, with material spread across the Library’s manuscript, map, newspaper, printed book and other collections.
Above: the display taking shape. Image by Cara Rodway.
These collections, specifically those relating to indigenous travellers to Britain across the centuries, are being used by the Beyond the Spectacle project, on which the Eccles Centre and other British Library colleagues are partners. In the second half of the day researchers from the project, Jack Davy and Kate Rennard, worked with Roberta Wedge, who frequently runs Wikipedia editathon days with the Library, to illustrate how collections such as those at the Library can be used for research and to improve the information found on public websites and encyclopaedias, such as Wikipedia. It is not unfair to say that some of the students started this part of the day dubious as to how they could use their learning and recent research to update something like Wikipedia but the day provided openings to a different perspective. Roberta’s work with Wikipedia and organising group edits of Wikipedia pages focusses on how the site can only reach its full potential if a wide range of individuals, publics and perspectives are contributing to the editing process. If this can be achieved, the content of Wikipedia and other online forums will reflect the diversity of the world in which we live and its complex history.
Above: students from the group researching and editing. Image by Phil Hatfield.
Part of the afternoon focussed on encouraging students to conduct their own research, based on the display from earlier in the day and using online archives and resources to dig into some of the other materials the Beyond the Spectacle project has been using. We are grateful to the British Newspaper Archive and Adam Matthew (creator of the American Indian Newspapers database) who both provided access to students on the day so they could engage with the materials held in their collections and use them in research and editing. Students used these materials to update entries on a number of Wikipedia pages, adding information to the page, ‘Four Mohawk Kings’, the page for St. Olave’s Church (London), setting up a new page on the playwright and actor Gowongo Mohawk and making a number of other edits.
By the end of the day many of the students were motivated by the realisation of how much agency they have to develop content on sites like Wikipedia and excited by the new research skills they had learnt by using the resources of the British Newspaper Archive and Adam Matthew. For me a favourite moment was when a student, asked how the day had influenced their perspective on Wikipedia noted that now, ‘Wikipedia is my new stomping ground’. The day showed the potential of supporting students and other researchers in gaining access to historic and digitised collections, it also highlighted how the knowledge gained from these can contribute to influential public sites. We hope to run similar events again, on a wide range of subjects, and thank Adam Matthew, the British Newspaper Archive, Wikipedia, Beyond the Spectacle and UBC for their support and partnership.
[PJH]
17 August 2018
Canada and Its Literature: A Tale of More Than Two Cultures 2/2
Language has inevitably played a significant role in Canada’s immigration patterns. Reflecting the country’s colonial history and occupation by both the French and the English, the two most commonly-spoken languages in Canada remain English (the mother tongue of 56% of Canadians) and French (that of 21% of Canadians). Of course, other factors influence human relocation, but it is easy to see the attraction of such a linguistic context for immigrants from former colonies. The Haitian-Canadian community is an especially good illustration. According to the 2011 Census, 97% of Haitian immigrants live in Quebec – the second most populous region of Canada, but more crucially, home to the largest French-speaking community in the country, and with French as the official language. The attraction is clear for people from Haiti, a former French colony that has retained French as the language of education and bureaucracy. And the Haitian community in Quebec has produced a significant amount of prominent migrant writers, such as Emile Ollivier, Marie-Célie Agnant, Gérard Etienne, Joël des Rosiers, Gary Klang and Anthony Phelps, many of whom are published by Mémoire d’encrier.
But the best-known of them worldwide is Dany Laferrière, a political refugee of the Duvalier regime who has lived in North America since the 1970s. Born to a politician and an archivist, Laferrière worked as a journalist before fleeing Haiti soon after a colleague and friend of his was found murdered on a beach – most probably by the government. His autobiographical novel, Le Cri des Oiseaux Fous (2000) [The Cry of Mad Birds] narrates this event, its impact on him and the horrors of the Duvalier dictatorship in more detail. After moving to Montreal as a 23-year-old, he spent several years scraping a living from insecure jobs, living in cheap flats and reading novels. His first novel, provocatively entitled Comment faire l’amour à un nègre sans se fatiguer (1985) [How to Make Love to a Negro without Getting Tired] was a resounding international success. The story followed the lives of two Haitians sharing a flat in Montreal, and satirically engaged with racist stereotypes. A film adaptation followed four years after but was censured in the U.S, revealing the country’s continuing discomfort with racial issues. Over thirty years on, and with over thirty books to his name, Laferrière will be honoring the Institut Français of London with a visit on 24/09/2018 as part of the British Library’s French Caribbean Study Day.
Another important migrant writer from Quebec is Kim Thuy. Born in Vietnam, her family escaped the communist regime in her homeland when she was ten years old and she spent several months in a refugee camp in Malaysia before being relocated to Quebec where she had to learn French, the language in which she now writes. First working as a translator and later as a lawyer, Thuy never severed her links with her homeland. As a lawyer for example, she went on an advisory assignment to Vietnam with a group of Canadian experts. Back in Montreal, she also opened a Vietnamese restaurant called Ru de Nam. She then turned to writing and explored themes such as Vietnamese immigrant women, the culture shocks of immigration, the mother-daughter relationship and Vietnamese food. Her latest publication, Le Secret des Vietnamiennes (2017) [Vietnamese Women’s Secret] is actually a cookbook of Vietnamese recipes handed down from mothers to daughters. Her first novel, Ru (2009) was a bestseller in Quebec and France, won prestigious awards worldwide and was translated into over twenty-five languages. It tells the story of a family’s journey from Vietnam to Quebec and their difficult adaptation to Canada. Loosely based on her experiences, it tackles the Vietnamese “boat people” refugee crisis involving dangerous escapes from Vietnam on over-crowded boats to refugee camps. Significantly, more than 50% of the Southeast Asian boat people came to Canada as a result of a government program.
As you can see, Laferrière and Thuy are just two of the many French-language Canadian writers and the British Library holds books many more Canadian multicultural writers than I can even allude to in this post. Now let’s have a quick look at what we hold in terms of English-language migrant writing:
Although technically speaking still a newcomer to the international literary scene, Lebanese-born writer and photographer Rawi Hage has been particularly in vogue since the publication of his first novel in 2006. Hage witnessed the civil war in his homeland and moved to Canada in the early 1990s where he had to work as a security guard and taxi driver to pay his way through university. Hage wasn’t the only person to relocate because of the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990). In fact, as the war dragged on, Canada and Australia were the only Western countries to set up special programs to welcome Lebanese refugees. The 2011 census shows that Lebanese-Canadians still form the largest Arabic-speaking group in Canada. Language certainly had a role in this too, as 45% of Lebanese nationals can speak French. While Hage writes in English – his third language – up to quite recently he lived in Francophone Montreal, like about half of the Lebanese-Canadian population. His award-winning debut novel, De Niro’s Game (2006), tackles the hard choices that young Lebanese people faced during the civil war. His second novel, Cockroach (2008), charts the trials of an impoverished Middle Eastern immigrant in Montreal through his sessions with his therapist after a failed suicide attempt, leading the reader to question the success of Canada’s multiculturalism ambitions.
Hage’s colleague writer and common-law partner Madeleine Thien has rightly argued that the Canadian literary prize-awarding establishment generally prioritizes white writers over nonwhite ones). And when “multicultural”/minority writers are included, they generally tend to be men. Evoking the prestigious Giller Prize, she remarks that only 12 nonwhite writers were shortlisted over a ten-year period, and that “this number includes twice each for Rawi Hage, M.G. Vassanji, and Michael Ondaatje”. Thien’s point is all the more significant considering the extent of nonwhite and multicultural women’s writing in Canada’s literary history. The Caribbean feminist and/or queer women writers Dionne Brand, M. Nourbese Philip, Olive Senior, Lorna Goodison, Shani Mootoo, Makeda Silvera and Nalo Hopkinson are only a few examples.
But in 2011, Esi Edugyan made history by being the first black woman to win the Giller Prize. Her novel, Half-Blood Blues, followed the lives of Afro-German and African-American jazz musicians fleeing the Gestapo in 1930s Berlin and Nazi-occupied Paris. Edugyan’s parents left Ghana in the 1970s, during a period of drastic change and political unrest following independence. Like many of their compatriots, they moved to Canada, where Ghanaians became the second-largest African immigrant group. Her family’s first-hand experiences of racism and difficulties adapting to life in Canada has inspired much of her writing. Her first novel for example, The Second Life of Samuel Tyne (2004), shows the disillusionment of a Ghanaian immigrant living in Alberta in the late 20th century, a character loosely based on her father. In the past few weeks, Edugyan has made the news again, by being long-listed (for the second time!) alongside Ondaatje for the Man Booker Prize. Her competing novel, Washington Black (2018), is an unconventional slave narrative which charts the life of a twelve-year-old slave working in a Barbados sugar plantation before fleeing an unjust execution in the 1830s, travelling to America, Canada, England, the Netherlands and Morocco. Good luck to her!
Laura Gallon.
Laura Gallon is a PhD placement student at the British Library where she is working on a project assessing holdings of migrant narratives in the North American collections. She is in the second year of her PhD at the University of Sussex which is looking at contemporary American short fiction by immigrant women writers. Her placement is supported by the Eccles Centre for American Studies.
15 February 2018
Researching American political pamphlets
Pamphlets have for centuries been an important medium for disseminating news and ideas and rallying public opinion, but their typically subversive nature made them a thorn in the side of rulers in Early Modern Europe. Pamphlets were notoriously vulgar and unreliable, and as such, the term ‘pamphlet’ and ‘pamphleteer’ were often used in a pejorative sense –– at one point even used as a synonym for a prostitute.1 But what of the pamphlet in 20th century America? How did new and improved technology and a radical, modern political landscape alter the nature of the pamphlet?
Having carried on much previous research on the radical politics of the interwar period, I was very excited at the prospect of exploring American political pamphlets from 1920-1945. This project is an AHRC-funded Collaborative Doctoral Partnership between the British Library and the University of Sussex, which makes use of the extensive collection of American political pamphlets held at the Library. The full scope of the pamphlets available is not yet known, and one of the major aims of the project is to produce a coherent and comprehensive digital database of the pamphlets for the Library, making them more accessible for both researchers and the public.
I feel extremely privileged to be given the opportunity to work with these pamphlets, many of which feature wonderful illustrations and photography. For example, this pamphlet issued by the Friends of the Soviet Union is filled with photos of working life in the Soviet Union, intended to display the ‘tremendous achievements’ of the first Five Year Plan.
This pamphlet by Pioneer Publishers (publishing house of the Socialist Workers Party, formerly the Communist League of America) is just one example of the some of the striking, politically-charged artwork to be found within many of these publications. This example features work by Laura Gray, who often produced illustrations for the Socialist Workers Party. Other notable radical illustrators to be found in the collection include Hugo Gellert, Robert Minor and William Gropper.
The history of pamphlets is not a topic that has been researched extensively, and what has been written focuses more on their uses in early modern Europe. This project hopes to bring to light the significance of the political pamphlet in modern America, eventually contributing to a more comprehensive history of the pamphlet overall. Some of the questions I will be asking include:
- Where were the centres of pamphlet production, and how did changes in press restrictions impact the production of pamphlets and the radical publishing house in general?
- Likewise, where were the main distribution centres for political pamphlets?
- How many of these American political pamphlets found themselves in the hands of groups across the Atlantic? If so, how, and what kind of influence did they have?
With regards to the content of the pamphlets, I am especially interested in exploring the interaction through pamphlets between the Left and conservative and fascist anti-communist groups and organisations. For example, how either side dealt with the other as a respective threat. The interwar period was marked by increasing ideological polarisation across the world, and America was no exception. On the one hand, this period saw the creation of the Communist Party of America along with many other left-wing organisations that had been inspired and strengthened by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, and on the other hand new fascist-inspired groups were formed while older far-right groups such as the Ku Klux Klan saw its membership reach its peak of 4 million in the 1920s. The raison d’être for the majority of the far-right became fighting the supposed international threat of Jews and Communists. At the same time, political repression on federal, state and local levels was overwhelmingly justified on anti-communist grounds. I want to explain how pamphlets were used by the Left and civil liberties groups to counter these threats, and how successful they were in doing so.
To be a PhD student with the British Library is an invaluable experience – from the extensive access to important resources, the support and expertise of staff, and the many opportunities available. I have enjoyed every moment and I am excited to unlock all the potential of this project.
[1] Joad Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) 8, 9.
By Jodie Collins,
AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Student, British Library and University of Sussex
Americas and Oceania Collections blog recent posts
- Ranette Prime: Food and Identity in Britain
- Sandra Agard: An Ode to Ridley Road
- Joe Williams: ‘the need for flavour’
- Ann Husbands: Black Pudding and Roti at Notting Hill Carnival
- One more step along the road I go: Tracking the first three months of my Chevening Fellowship
- A Tour of Indigenous London
- Canada and Its Literature: A Tale of More Than Two Cultures 2/2
- Researching American political pamphlets
- Resources for engaging Māori contemporary culture and politics
- Australasia in the Americas blog
Archives
Tags
- Official Publications
- #AnimalTales
- #EcclesFellows
- 1812
- Africa
- American Revolution
- Americas
- Animal Tales
- Arctic
- Artists' Books
- Australasia
- Australia
- Beats
- Bibliography
- Black & Asian Britain
- Business
- Canada
- Captain Cook
- Caribbean
- Civil War
- Classics
- Collections
- Comics-Unmasked
- Conferences
- Contemporary Britain
- Curation
- Current Affairs
- Decolonising
- Digital scholarship
- Digitisation project
- East Asia
- Eccles Centre
- Eccles Fellows
- Eccles Photographs
- Eccles Writer in Residence
- Emancipation Proclamation
- Endangered languages
- eResources
- Events
- Exhibitions
- Fashion
- Film
- Fine Press
- Food and Drink
- Franklin Fridays
- Geography
- Government publications
- Guides
- Haiti
- Hemingway
- History
- Humanities
- International
- Latin America
- Law
- Legal deposit
- LGBTQ+
- Literature
- Manuscripts
- Maps
- Medieval history
- Mexico
- Middle East
- Modern history
- Museums
- Music
- New Zealand
- Newsroom
- North America
- Oceania
- Oil
- Online resources
- Pacific Islands
- Philatelic
- Photography
- Poetry
- Polar
- Politics
- Publishing
- Rare books
- Religion
- Research
- Research collaboration
- Romance languages
- Russian Revolution
- Science
- Slavonic
- Social Sciences
- sound and vision
- South Asia
- South East Asia
- Sports
- Television
- Travel
- Unfinished Business
- USA
- Visual Arts
- Web/Tech
- Weblogs
- West Africa
- Women's histories
- World War One
- Writing