Darkness on the Edge of Town

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. The producer of Midsomer Murders was suspended for comments to the Radio Times which included the claim that the show was the ‘last bastion of Englishness’ and should stay that way. See <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12741847>. 2. Also, a survey conducted by Ipsos Mori for Eastern Eye newspaper before the 2001 general election found that ninety per cent of British Asians were loyal to the UK in the war against terrorism (the figure among Muslims was eighty-seven per cent). 3. Kurieshi's work has been the subject of cinema screenplay (eg My Beautiful Launderette) and television adaptation (Buddha) but he is considered here as a fiction writer, which is his main metier. 4. Eg Dhaliwal's claim that ‘Asian men flounder, unable to decide between the enticements and insecurities of western life, and the rigid certainties and comforts of traditional patriarchy. Few know how to integrate the competing elements of their masculinity into an honest, functional whole’. He has also written various articles supportive of the British Empire (‘Man About the House’ in The Times 26 June 2006 at <http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/style/article741838.ece>). 5. Many articles on Kureishi have been penned, as a search of Google Scholar will confirm. Londonstani is central to the thesis of Blake Brandes which I examined at Kent University in autumn 2010. 6. Newham has campaigned since 1994 for its outer London borough designation to be removed and it refused to participate in the GLA Outer London Commission, claiming more affinity with inner London than leafy suburbia.