With the toppling of the Edward Colston statue in Bristol in June 2020, the growing visibility of black characters in historical dramas from Bridgerton to The Last Kingdom and recent TV documentary series by David Olusoga and Lenny Henry, the profile of what is often called “black British history” has never been higher.
But Hakim Adi, who became the UK’s first black history professor in 2015, is not entirely happy this label has become so popular. “It suggests there is white British history and black British history,” said Professor Adi, now professor of the history of Africa and the African diaspora at the University of Chichester.
