Everyone knows that Black people didn't exist in the UK until recently, right? Despite mountains of evidence of everything from Black Tudors and Victorian actors, some myths perniciously persist.

What was the experience for Black Britons during the second world war?

I find it fascinating how the US cultural hegemony rewrites history. I've heard people in the UK talk about "Jim Crow laws" as though that was a thing that happened in the UK. It wasn't. While there were barriers and racism (as the book makes clear) the experience of Black people in the UK was vastly different than it was for African Americans. To the point that white American GIs were routinely castigated for trying to impose their vile racism onto our country.

What makes this book special is the contemporary reports and modern interviews. There are some amazing stories to be told and it is fascinating to hear first-hand accounts. The book also contains a list of prominent Black people living in the UK (including their addresses) which feels a little like padding - but then this is fleshed out with mini-biographies of most of them. What is astounding is, given the range of people living in Britain, you occasionally get little revelations like this:

Only one black evacuee has ever been interviewed for a television documentary.

Some people profiled are, for want of a better word, ordinary. People who had normal lives, kept the home fires burning, and took part in ordinary civic life. And then there are guys like Ras Prince Monolulu who were bona-fide celebrities.

It is fair to say that modern Britain's relationship with the notion of "Empire" is complicated. When the call to arms came, people from the farthest colonies rushed to aide the "motherland". In many cases, they were initially rejected due to formal or informal colour-bars. The social acceptability of and legal ramifications of these practices is evidenced in Constantine v Imperial Hotels Ltd.

But for every story of casual and institutional racism towards people who came to help, there are stories of love and acceptance.

The English people opened their homes to us, we were invited out for dinners, teas, no problems at all. There were problems with the American forces, but it didn’t hinder us.

As with any history book, some of the language used can feel a little shocking or distasteful. History is never easy to engage with, but this book presents an even handed look at a turbulent period. It ends a little abruptly, but it is an excellent overview of the literature. Recommended for anyone who wants to understand our history.

But then I started reading about how Blumenbach literally invented the concept of distinct human races. And about how the discredited "Science" of race is making a comeback. And then about the Philosophy of Race weaves its pernicious influence. And I found it illuminating.

Of course, theorising is a different experience to lived reality.

I visited Kuala Lumpur recently. As I registered for various apps and websites, I kept being asked the same question - "What is your ethnicity?"

Here are the options I was commonly given:

One app went a little further:

I was very literally being othered.

By contrast, here's the "What is your ethnicity" form presented to me by a recent NHS survey in the UK:

Race, ethnicity, background, tribe. They're all important in context. The number of Latina/Latino people in the UK is negligible compared to the USA⁰. I doubt there are many Irish Travellers in Malaysia. There are large numbers of Japanese and Korean people in the UK - but they all get lumped under "Other Asian".

Here's how the England and Wales Census records ethnicity:

It is important to understand that race is a social construct.

For example, the Census questionnaire in South Africa asks if you are "Black African, Coloured, Indian or Asian, White, Other". What is "Coloured"? If you identify as such, which box would you tick on the UK census?

The US Census has ethnicity categories for "American Indian or Alaska Native" and "Hispanic or Latino". Where do people in those categories fit in with, say, the South African census?

The New Zealand Census has 180 different categories for ethnicity!

Do all these "races" exist? If one of your grandparents is Japanese, one Coloured, one White Irish, one Bumiputera - what box do you tick?

It is important to make sure you aren't discriminating against people. And it can be useful to know the demographics of people who are interacting with you. And, sure, you probably want broad enough categories which are relevant to your culture.

But... Are you measuring something which meaningfully exists?

It's always worth re-examining our relationship with "classic" works. There are some very obvious immigration issues in Shakespeare - and this book does a plausible job of uncovering some of them. It also takes us through some of the issues facing Elizabethan England - for example, how the Welsh "immigrants" were treated by the "native" London population, and how that manifests through Fluellen in Henry V.

Some of the essays are a little more scattershot. One attempts to compare the US's Green Card Lottery with Portia's caskets test in Merchant of Venice. I sort of get the parallel, but it really only warrants a paragraph or two, rather than an entire essay.

As usual with theses sorts of books, it was a little too academically written for my tastes. I think it might have benefited from a more populist tone. There are acres of fascinating stories and titbits hidden behind some exclusionary language.

But, in the end, I can't help but agree with its conclusion:

Access to alternative perspectives changes our orientation with regard to Shakespeare’s work because, from the vantage point of other possible homes, the home that Shakespeare offers is not always optimal and, instead of the stranger in Shakespeare, we may find that Shakespeare has become the stranger.

Ira Aldridge -- a black New Yorker -- was one of nineteenth-century Europe's greatest actors. By the time he began touring in Europe he was principally a Shakespearean actor, playing such classic characters as Shylock, Macbeth, Richard III, and King Lear. Although his frequent public appearances made him the most visible black man in the world by mid-nineteenth century, today Aldridge tends to be a forgotten figure, seldom mentioned in histories of British and European theater. This collection restores the luster to Aldridge's reputation by examining his extraordinary achievements against all odds. The early essays offer biographical information, while later essays examine his critical and popular reception throughout the world. Taken together, these diverse approaches to Aldridge offer a fuller understanding and heightened appreciation of a remarkable man who had an exceptionally interesting life and a spectacular career.

After reading "The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race", I decided to pick up some more books about the history of Black people playing Shakespeare. First up - Ira Aldridge.

Ira was, reportedly, the first Black man to perform Shakespeare plays in the UK. He seems to have been incredibly popular with audiences - although less so with some critics.

The book contains all manner of contemporary accounts - reviews, pamphlets, and letters. They give us a fascinating glimpse into what the reaction was from all sections of society. There are some astoundingly racist contemporary comments - apparently Black people's lips are the wrong shape to pronounce English properly! On that note, because of the verbatim reproduction of documents, there are a wide variety of offensive words and sentiments embedded in the story. The past isn't always a pretty place - and we have to acknowledge that.

Similarly, Ira Aldridge himself isn't treated as a saint. Clearly a talented individual - but with some disturbing aspects to his personal life. The book doesn't shy away from discussing him as a complete human.

It isn't quite an autobiography - there's no narrative arc. Instead, the book is a bit of a hodge-podge of essays - and suffers a bit from being repetitious. One of the essays is a series of letters to Aldridge from his admirers - which might be interesting to the completionist, but otherwise just feels like padding. Unfortunately, the eBook version is missing the images from the printed version. That's just hostile from the publisher.

Ultimately, it is a fascinating glimpse into the life of a man who helped redefine audience's expectations of Shakespeare. It's also contains a number of disturbing facts about the past - I had no idea that African-American New Yorkers were banned by the police from playing Shakespeare!

It also made me think about how we define civilisation. Aldridge was performing towards the end of the legality of the slave trade in Britain. He became a symbol to many people - "proving" that Black people were capable of attaining moral and intellectual greatness. Why is acting in the classics seen as something which elevates men above each other?

If you have even a passing interest in the way Shakespeare was performed, and how one man became such a star only to fade into obscurity - this is a great starting point.

The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race shows teachers and students how and why Shakespeare and race are inseparable. Moving well beyond Othello, the collection invites the reader to understand racialized discourses, rhetoric, and performances in all of Shakespeare's plays, including the comedies and histories.

Race is presented through an intersectional approach with chapters that focus on the concepts of sexuality, lineage, nationality, and globalization. The collection helps students to grapple with the unique role performance plays in constructions of race by Shakespeare (and in Shakespearean performances), considering both historical and contemporary actors and directors.

The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race will be the first book that truly frames Shakespeare studies and early modern race studies for a non-specialist, student audience.

I'm not sure I'm qualified to read or understand this book. I'm not a scholar, but an occasional Shakespearean actor. I also have very little understanding of literary theory. But I'm greatly interested in both Shakespeare and race - so let's dive in!

It's a series of (mostly) good essays setting out the modern literary criticisms of Shakespeare's attitudes to race. It takes great pains to say that it isn't being critical of Shakespeare the person but it is a critical reading of its works to help us understand the prevailing attitudes of his contemporaries.

We know that there were Black people living in Tudor England - but how did Shakespeare's audience understand the concept of race? What historic literary allusions does Shakespeare use which would be understood in The Globe, but are lost to modern audiences?

I found the introduction slightly muddled. We're told that scientific race does not exist. And that notions of race are a relatively modern invention. So how can there be prejudice and systemic discrimination on something that doesn't exist? The book introduced me to the terms race-making and racecraft - which attempts to define a form of racism outside of notions of race. I found the arguments somewhat circular and, to be frank, a little question begging:

In the past some scholars have argued that the malleability and inconsistency of racialized discourses in the early modern period are evidence that Shakespeare and his contemporaries were not engaged in a racialized epistemology. In their formulation, inconsistency is a negative indicator of racecraft. Let me be clear, critical race theory has slain this dragon. Constructions of race are inconsistent and opportunistic; that is one of the hallmarks of race-making and racecraft.

I find that a difficult statement to get on board with. It might be my lack of familiarity with the arguments - but I don't understand how something inconsistent can correlate strongly with an attitude. Nor how non-modern attitudes can be successfully applied to historic attitudes.

Some of the essays are disappointingly short. Patricia Akhimie's discussion on "Racist Humor and Shakespearean Comedy" could easily have been twice as long. As she says, explaining a joke kills it - but it would be lovely to have gone into a deeper dive.

With other essays, the phrases "what if…" and "perhaps" do a lot of a the heavy lifting. Yes, maybe Othello's Bianca is intended to be Black. That's certainly an interesting reading of it - and brings up all sort of questions. But there's scant evidence to support it.

A few of the essays barely touch on Shakespeare. While it is nice to understand some of the geopolitics - it sort of feels like padding. There are some impressive essays giving context to what audiences of the time would have expected from the plays in terms of racial tropes. And the discussion of the practical nature of "blacking up" and general stagecraft are excellent.

On the literary theory side, I found the constant assertion that the word "black" automatically referred to skin colour a little facile. A dark and stormy night doesn't necessarily mean that people equate blackness with unpleasantness. In my (uneducated) opinion, the over-reliance on dubious semiotics does no favours to the overall thesis. I also didn't agree with lumbering in the bloodline of kings with the notion of race - but found the look at how the different nations were stereotyped a useful primer in the ways that Shakespeare and his audience thought about social differences. Indeed, several essays cover attitudes to religion, class, and sexuality - which are often intersectional with race.

The book also introduced me to Ira Aldridge - an African-American actor who played Shakespeare around the UK in the 1800s! I had no idea of his story - nor his struggles - and I'm eagerly looking forward to reading more about him.

Adrian Lester brings some much needed modern perspective. The unique voice of an actor - who has extensive practical experience performing rather than theorising - is refreshing. He identifies the inherent tension in performing in front of an audience with a modern understanding of race. Sadly, there are still too few non-white actors on the British stage and screen.

One thing it doesn't look at is the future of interpreting race in Shakespeare. Modern performances often play with race. And audiences are used to gender-flipped and age-blind casting. But it's rare (in the UK) to see an all-Black cast play Shakespeare. What does it do to our sense of the plays if Juliet is Japanese and Romeo is a love-sick Weebo? If Lear is played as an Angry Black Man? What if Oberon, Titania, and the fairy court are all Māori? Do we feel more sympathy to Shylock if he's Ethiopian?

In short - how does a modern audience understand the race aspects of the plays?

With all that said, this is a fascinating look at what "race" meant to Shakespeare and how it is expressed in his works. Are some of Shakespeare's jokes racist? Yes. But they're also classist, ableist, and homophobic - he was an intersectional bigot.

This is an excellent book. I found it a difficult read - there were lots of words and phrases I was unfamiliar with. But it will certainly stretch your brain and force you to confront the genteel stereotype of Shakespeare.

When it comes to racial justice, how do we transform demonstrations of support into real and meaningful change? With intellectual rigour and razor-sharp wit, Emma Dabiri cuts through the haze of online discourse to offer clear advice.

This was a refreshing and necessary book to read. Refreshing because so much of the discourse on race is driven by the USA's cultural hegemony - whereas this book is rooted firmly in Ireland and the UK. While it does cover some of the US experience, it isn't exclusively focussed there.

And necessary because *gestures widely*

The book is written in an intriguing style. It effortlessly blends casual and formal language. It isn't as dense as some scholarly works of race that I've read recently, and that's a good thing. It is a good mix of history, background, and practical discussion. It also contains some - rightful - rages against the current state of "activism":

The nature of social media is such that the performance of saying something often trumps doing anything, the tendency to police language, to shame and to say the right thing, often outweighs more substantive efforts.

Yes! While it may feel great to rant and rave on Twitter - it has almost zero impact. You need to actually go out and do something. Whether that's lobbying a company, speaking to your elected representatives, or giving to charity. What we can't do is weaponise class differences - telling people that they have white privilege isn't sufficient to cause change:

We might abhor it, but if a tenuous and fragile feeling of superiority over black people or other minoritized people is all Donny has, why is he going to give that up? What is being offered in return?

I wrote something similar a while ago. As the book makes clear, we have to realise that racism hurts all of us. It isn't just about those who it targets - it is a poison which corrupts everything.

One of the most startling revelations, for me was the notion of how "European style ‘formal’ education, have all imposed the ‘white gaze’." It's quite a concept that our society doesn't exist in a philosophical "neutral zone". Just like how the male gaze defines how movies are made and laws are passed, it is fascinating to understand that we have created systems which don't reflect reality, only a subset of it. I recommend reading “Philosophy of Race: An Introduction” by Naomi Zack for more.

I think the only real flaw is that it doesn't quite contain enough practical steps. In order to build a treehouse, it isn't enough to say "buy some wood and assemble". As the author acknowledges:

Frankly, there’s a huge gap in terms of what comes next. While we need to identify what to do, it’s important not to fixate on an endpoint or a final destination; such thinking is part of the problem. Rather we have to understand our lives as a dynamic flowing of positions.

The chapter headings are a great précis of the internal steps white people need to take - what do you need to realise about your behaviour? - but stops a little short of concrete actions.

It's a short, but thoroughly interesting book.

Thanks to NetGalley for the review copy. The book is out now and you can buy it via the below links.