Stonehenge, carnival, folk and fascists: how Zakia Sewell went in pursuit of the real story of Britain

Zakia Sewell is a broadcaster and DJ who currently hosts Dream Time on BBC 6 Music. She grew up in west London and spent a lot of her childhood in Wales, where her grandparents lived. In 2020, she made My Albion, an acclaimed four-part Radio 4 documentary in which she looked at Britain through the songs and stories of its folk culture. She has returned to these themes for her debut book, Finding Albion, where she mixes memoir, history and mythology as she seeks to find where she belongs as a mixed-race woman. The result is an image of a country that is radical, messy and beautiful. 

Zakia spoke to the Nerve from a hotel room in Bristol, in the middle of a whirlwind national book tour that almost mirrors the journey she takes across Britain in the book.  

Can you expand a little on a key theme throughout your book: the internal relationship between the oppressed and oppressor – not only in terms of being a person of colour, but also in relation to the Welsh and Scottish nationalist movements? 
This is a book that's absolutely written from my perspective as someone of dual heritage. My dad's family is white and English with a bit of Welsh mixed in there, my mum's family are Black and Caribbean, and it's a complex place to be. 

As a kid, I was blissfully unaware of my in-between-ness. But now I was left with an identity crisis and a conflict about who I was. I don’t think that’s unique to Black British people. Many people feel very conflicted about their relationship to the land, because any decent common person is horrified by the atrocities that were committed under the British empire all around the world, and is going to have a conflicted relationship to their Britishness.

I've found an alternative history that counters the romanticised vision of empire with stories of radicals throughout the ages who fought to make Britain a better place – from the Chartists to the Diggers, who believed in the abolition of private property. I've also learned more about those dark, shadow aspects of our past and colonial history. At the end of the quest, I just feel like I've got a more honest, well-rounded, balanced view of our past and our present in Britain. 

You divide the book into experiences around the solstices. How did that come about?
That is actually thanks in part to my wonderful editor, Anna Baty. The book has a lovely natural narrative arc, starting in a druid ceremony in Stonehenge – all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed – to the peak and abandon of summer at Notting Hill carnival. Then the darkness of the autumn and Samhain – those kinds of darker, more spooky customs, where I think about colonial spectres and some shadow aspects of the nation's psyche, and then back around to the light.

There has been a history of the far right appropriating folk culture (in Britain they did so in the 1930s and 40s, claiming a ‘blood and soil’ connection to the land and a retreat from ‘urban’ influences). Were you surprised that so much of folk culture, and these beautiful festivals, had such a dark undercurrent? 
When I set out on my quest and when I first became interested in folk culture, I realised that there was some radical potential in it to reframe our history and our heritage in Britain. I probably hoped that I'd find this utopian vision, fantasising about the pagan parties at Stonehenge, and the radical, rebellious vision of Britain that I could belong to. 

I imagined that Albion would be this uncomplicated, unsullied alternative to the more dominant visions of Britain that are very much enmeshed with the celebration and reverence of monarchy, military and empire. I wasn't aware, when I started, about the use of blackface in Morris dancing, for example, or that folk music in the early days had been co-opted by fascists.

The Notting Hill carnival has a fascinating history, which I didn't know about. I've been going to the carnival since I was a child. It was only through writing the book that I learned not only of an interesting alternative origin story – with Rhaune Laslett and the London Free School and its weird English folk-fair origins – but also, as I found, its dark roots in a white plantation celebration [see, for example, the history of the Dame Lorraine caricature costumes].

When we look at these traditions, they have a wonderful ability to be reimagined and reframed. These complex stories – that are neither good nor bad, nor right nor wrong when we're thinking about our heritage and our history – are able to be in that middle space, that place of nuance and complexity.

Which festival was your favourite to visit? What did you take away from it?
Stonehenge on the spring equinox was the most moving for me. I've been to Stonehenge before, but I'd never been at the solstice or equinox when you can actually get up close and personal with the stones. It was just such a mysterious and epic monument. I was almost afraid that I wouldn't feel anything, but I found it deeply powerful.

It was a lot more diverse than I thought it would be – a real mix of all these kinds of disparate tribes and nations of people coming together to just do this human, fundamental act of watching the sunrise. I'm a bit of an idealist, probably, and a utopian at heart. And somehow the spirit of Stonehenge at the spring equinox really spoke to that part of me.

On the flip side, there’s the relationship between the far right and British/English mythology. Can you tell us more about that?
The folk collector Cecil Sharp had a vision of folk culture that was absolutely tied to his search for customs that were connected to a true and essential “Englishness.” So you can see how that ties in with the sorts of ideas promoted by the far right – ideas of indigeneity. [But] there has always been cultural exchange within folk culture; the idea that these traditions somehow connect people back to a true, pure, indigenous Englishness is just untrue.

And then you have this confusion about who we're talking about when we're talking about the indigenous British or English. So you will see Anglo-Saxon fascist neopagans co-opting Celtic traditions that aren't their own. It doesn't really make sense. It's all imaginary. 

Even going back to the supposedly indigenous Britons who built Stonehenge, they were descended from immigrants who arrived here from present-day Turkey. Whether it's the story of Albina and her 30 sisters, who came from Syria, or the Trojan hero Brutus, these are both stories about people from outside coming in and starting life in Britain.

What I liked about this book is that there is no real conclusion. Have you discovered that conclusion yet? Will you?
I hope what comes across at the end is an invitation for people to consider the aspects of British culture that they want to celebrate. Albion can't be determined by me; this is a personal quest and a personal vision of the aspects of Britishness that I feel need to be celebrated. It's an invitation for people to say: “I have a stake here, and what do I want to champion?”.

I suppose that's what I feel is required, you know, particularly in this moment with the far right on the rise. Those of us who reject those toxic and exclusionary visions can't just sit back and go: "Oh no, Britishness, that's got nothing to do with me." I think it's time to actually partake and seek out alternative stories and make those visible.

How do you stay positive? And how would you advise others to stay positive?
Therapy! And also, we should all try to have a community and remember the humanity in each other.

You are on your book tour; what do you always carry with you?
Funnily enough, I've got this beautiful pebble that I leave in my coat pocket. It is from Wales and has become a talisman. A beautiful stone that's really, really soft to the touch. It's been with me now for years, and it's something that connects me back to Wales and to the landscape.

Finding Albion: Myth, Folklore and the Quest for a Hidden Britain is published by Hodder (£25)