Steve Roud was Local Studies Librarian for the London Borough of Croydon and served as Honorary Librarian of the Folklore Society for over fifteen years. He has been researching British folklore for over thirty years and is the joint author of the Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore, plus other books on traditional drama and folk song, and the Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland, which won the Katharine Briggs Folklore Award in 2004. His publications include London Lore (2008) and The Lore of the Playground (2010). He also compiles the Folk Song Index and the Broadside Index, two internationally acclaimed computer databases of traditional folk and popular song. He lives in Sussex.

Steve Roud

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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

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

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

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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