Asking a historian to review three of his favourite history books is a bit like asking a film critic to name their three all time great films; an impossible task. The books I have chosen, therefore, are the culmination of a great deal of torment. In truth though my task was made slightly easier by the fact that the books I chose had to have some relevance to Black History Month. Nevertheless I hope the three books reviewed here offer a breadth of chioce to those with an interest in Black history.

Staying Power

The History of Black People in Britain
Peter Fryer
Pluto Press 1985

As some one who came to Britain at the age of 17 and having had all schooling in India, I had no idea that Britain had much of a 'black' history. Not that the perceptions of those of my contemporaries who had been born and brought up in Britain were any better. Imagine my surprise then when not only do I pick up a book with title that just dares you to read it but one which begins with the most memorable first sentence in all literature; 'There were Africans in Britain before the English came here'. Even now nearly two decades after the first reading I remember the sheer electricity that coursed through my body at the time.

All too often books of this nature end being academic in remote in tone, so much so that even when the message is really profound it doesn't get a wide audience. Not only is Staying Power written in a most accessible easy to read style it is also one of the most thoroughly researched. Covering a vast period of history encompassing just about any and every facet of the black British experience over at least the last 5oo years this book revealed to me figures and movements that I had no idea of thereby lending a much needed depth to my understanding of my past. No longer were we depicted as passive victims but as people who had profoundly influenced, as well as being influenced by, the history of Britain. No wonder it came to be one of the most widely thumbed and borrowed book of the my generation.

Perhaps the biggest shock of the book comes from learning the identity of the author Peter Fryer. I like everyone else at the time assumed that Staying Power must have been written by a black writer. To find then that not only is Fryer white but a born and bred Yorkshire man was profoundly moving experience about the universality of the human capacity to see a bigger picture beyond our narrow horizons of ethnicity, nationalism and religion. It is this book more than any other that reminds me of the great Caribbean writer CLR James' remark: 'when we fight the whites will be with us'. Go out and buy this book.

Punjabi Saga

It is often said of migrants that it is only when they have left the certainties of the land of their birth that they being to search for their past. I can honestly say about my self that my awareness of the rich cultural and historical heritage of India was not shaped until I came to Britain in 1975. Perhaps there is something about having lost your usual bearings and finding yourself rudderless in a totally new environment , one which often dismissed or devalued your cultural heritage, that can provide you with the impetus to find out more about that which you have physically left behind but are spiritually tied to. This drive is perhaps also fuelled by the desire for some kind of positive affirmation of all that had been taken for granted back in the homeland.

Punjabi Saga had ironically been one of the books on my reading list when I was a university student in the late 1980s but for some reason I never got around to reading it. It was by chance that I happened to come by the book while browsing through a book shop in London a few years later and decided to give it a go. And what an absolutely rich seam of the vanishing cultural heritage of Punjab it proved. To put it in context, Punjabi Saga is actually a trilogy which begins with the best and highly acclaimed Punjabi Century. The other two, Beyond Punjab and Back to Punjab, are fine books in their own right but if you are going to read just one then it has to be Punjabi Century, the undoubted star.

A beguilingly simple concept the book nevertheless traces the history of five generations of the author's family through two centuries of momentous change culminating in the partition of the province between India and Pakistan in 1947 and the subsequent mass migrations and communal massacres that took place in that year. Along the way though, it captures the minutiae of a common culture which is now all but vanished. Beginning with coming of the English it is the tale of the daily lives of ordinary Punjabis and how their cultures enabled them to live through such incredible times of change. A book for everyone with an interest in culture and history, it will nevertheless have a special nostalgic appeal for Punjabis of my generation. Ideal bedside reading, but be prepared for some tears.

The Great Moguls

Known to most as the original presenter of the cult television programme University Challenge, Bamber Gascoigne, or Bambi as he is affectionately known to fans of the 'Young Ones', is also a renowned art historian. Although I missed his seminal BBC television series The Great Mughals in the 1970s, the book that accompanied it was the first art history text on Indian art that I ever read.

Given the current communal and nationalist frenzy afflicting the region, this book has a special significance for me. It is quite fashionable in right wing Hindu nationalist circles nowadays to dismiss the Mughals as brutal and intolerant foreign invaders who looted India and imposed a dark age on it. Full of beautiful images of paintings, figures, buildings and gardens and accompanied by an easy and accessible textual style this book is a useful reminder that for all the brutality and venality of later Mughals such as Aurangzeb the reigns of Akbar, Jahangir and Shahjahan resulted in the development of a real syncretic culture. The Mughals could never have ruled as an occupying foreign power and unlike their invaders made India their home. The book's key contribution is to lay out with great wit and imagination the results of this policy on the flowering of literature, painting, architecture and the arts generally in India during the Mughal era. What really stand out more than anything else is the fact that all this was accomplished by incorporating all the available talents regardless religious or national origins. The development of Mughal miniature painting is good case to illustrate this point. Gascoigne shows that while the miniature tradition in India was founded by Persian masters who accompanied the Emperor Humayun on his return to India from exile in Iran it flowered into a distinct art form under the guidance of Indian, mostly Hindu, artists during the reigns of Akbar and his son Jahangir.

The publication of The Great Moghals 30 years year ago spawned a myriad of similar books but for my money as introduction to the art history of the period none has ever bettered this book. I notice also that it also now available in a new paperback addition. So rush to your nearest bookstore.

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