Len Deighton was born in 1929 in London. He did his national service in the RAF, went to the Royal College of Art and designed many book jackets, including the original UK edition of Jack Kerouac's On the Road. The enormous success of his first spy novel, The IPCRESS File (1962), was repeated in a remarkable sequence of books over the following decades. These varied from historical fiction (Bomber, perhaps his greatest novel) to dystopian alternative fiction (SS-GB) and a number of brilliant non-fiction books on the Second World War (Fighter, Blitzkrieg and Blood, Tears and Folly). 
 
His spy novels chart the twists and turns of Britain and the Cold War in ways which now give them a unique flavour. They preserve a world in which Europe contains many dictatorships, in which the personal can be ruined by the ideological and where the horrors of the Second World War are buried under only a very thin layer of soil. Deighton's fascination with technology, his sense of humour and his brilliant evocation of time and place make him one of the key British espionage writers, alongside John Buchan, Eric Ambler, Ian Fleming and John Le Carré.

Len Deighton

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Hannah Azieb Pool

In 1974 Hannah Azieb-Pool was adopted from an orphanage in Eritrea and brought to England by her white adoptive father. She grew up unable to imagine what it must be like to look into the eyes of a blood relative until one day a letter arrived from a brother she never knew she had. Not knowing what to do with the letter, Hannah hid it away. But she was unable to forget it, and ten years later she finally decided to track down her surviving Eritrean family and embarked upon a journey that would take her far from the comfort zone of her metropolitan lifestye to confront the poverty and oppression of a life that could so easily have been her own.

My Fathers' Daughter

Judith Bryan

When Anita finally returns to London after a long absence, everything has changed. 
 
Her father is dead, her mother has disappeared, and she and her sister Beth are alone together for the first time in years. 
 
 They share a house. They share a family. They share a past. 
 
 Tentatively, they reach out to one another for connection, but the house echoes with words unspoken. Can they confront the pain of the past together? 
 
 Dazzling and heart-breaking, Bernard and the Cloth Monkey is a shattering portrait of family, a rebellion against silence and a testament to the human capacity for survival.

Bernard and the Cloth Monkey

A collection of rediscovered works celebrating Black Britain curated by Booker Prize-winner Bernardine Evaristo

Charlotte Williams

The daughter of a white Welsh-speaking mother and a Black father from Guyana, Charlotte Williams' childhood world was one of mixed messages, dominated by the feeling that 'somehow to be half Welsh and half Afro-Caribbean was always to be half of something but never quite anything whole at all'. 
 
Sugar and Slate tells the fascinating story of her journey of self-discovery, toing and froing between the small north Wales town where she grew up, Africa and the Caribbean. Blending memoir with historical research, Sugar and Slate delves deep into Black Welsh history, revealing the nation as home to one of the first interracial marriages in Britain in 1768, and a site of Britain's first major race riots in 1919. 
 
Powerful, lyrical and intimate, Williams' experience casts light on Wales and Welshness, illuminating what it is to be racially marginalized within a community, which is itself marginalized within Britain, and offering a unique insight into the complex Black history of Wales.

Sugar and Slate

Dillibe Onyeama

Dillibe was the second black boy to study at Eton - joining in 1965 - and the first to complete his education there. Written at just 21, this is a deeply personal, revelatory account of the racism he endured during his time as a student at the prestigious institution. He tells in vivid detail of his own background as the son of a Nigerian judge at the International Court of Justice at The Hague, of his arrival at the school, of the curriculum, of his reception by other boys (and masters), and of his punishments. He tells, too, of the cruel racial prejudice and his reactions to it, and of the alienation and stereotyping he faced at such a young age. A Black Boy at Eton is a searing, ground-breaking book displaying the deep psychological effects of colonialism and racism.

A Black Boy at Eton

Jacqueline Roy

It is the 1990s, and Gloria is living in a London psychiatric ward. She is unapologetically loud, audacious and eternally on the brink of bursting into song. After several months of uninterrupted routine, she is joined by another young black woman - Merle - who is full of silences and fear. 
 
Unable to confide in their doctors, they agree to journal their pasts. Whispered into tape recorders and scrawled ferociously at night, the remarkable stories of their lives are revealed. 
 
In this tender, deeply-moving depiction of mental health, Roy creates a striking portrait of two women finding strength in their shared vulnerability, as they navigate a system that fails to protect them. Life-affirming and fearlessly hopeful, this is an unforgettable story.

The Fat Lady Sings

Amryl Johnson

Sequins for a Ragged Hem narrates Johnson's return tour to Trinidad as a spiritual homecoming made problematic, among other reasons, by the fact that the house where she was born had been demolished. 
 
Amryl Johnson came to England from Trinidad when she was eleven. In 1983 she set off for a six month journey in the Caribbean. From the moment she steps off the plane into 'carnival fever', we are caught up in the excitement of her journey: her reunion with her mother, the exhilaration of dancing all night to calypso on the streets of Port-of-Spain . . . But she cannot escape, nor wants to, from the inheritance of colonialism. 
 
Her time in the Caribbean is also a journey of the self. The quest for memory is as powerful as the desire to escape. As her trip draws to a close, she describes with courage and eloquence her attempts to reunite the selves that have been separated by different cultures.

Sequins for a Ragged Hem

Barbara Blake Hannah

Travelling over from Jamaica as a teenager, Barbara's journey is remarkable. She finds her footing in TV, and blossoms. Covering incredible celebrity stories, travelling around the world and rubbing shoulders with the likes of Germaine Greer and Michael Caine - her life sparkles. But with the responsibility of being the first black woman reporting on TV comes an enormous amount of pressure, and a flood of hateful letters and complaints from viewers that eventually costs her the job. 
 
In the aftermath of this fallout, she goes through a period of self-discovery that allows her to carve out a new space for herself first in the UK and then back home in Jamaica - one that allows her to embrace and celebrate her black identity, rather than feeling suffocated in her attempts to emulate whiteness and conform to the culture around her. 
Growing Out provides a dazzling, revelatory depiction of race and womanhood in the 1960s from an entirely unique perspective.

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