Black men in England

Caryl Phillips has found his niche, as a master of historical ‘re-imaginings’. To blend real sources and fictional interpretations into a continuous narrative requires expert control, and he has it. Foreigners tells the heartbreaking stories of three black men struggling, and ultimately failing, to find their footing in England. It follows Dancing in the Dark (2005), which employed a similar hotchpotch of fictional and factual voices to tell the story of the black US entertainer Bert Williams. In the interim, Phillips has refined this distinctive technique to devastating effect.

First up is Francis Barber, Samuel Johnson’s beloved servant, who was a former slave and ended his life ruined in an asylum despite having been left money by Johnson. This section is narrated in the voice of a pompous but sympathetic friend of Johnson’s, who begins to understand Barber’s peculiar plight despite demonstrating the in-built prejudices of his era.