A historian\u2019s personal journey through complex questions of immigration, home and nation<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From Ireland to London in the 1950s, Derry in the Troubles to contemporary, deindustrialised Manchester, Joyce finds that ties of place, family and the past are difficult to break. Why do certain places continue to haunt us? What does it mean to be British after the suffering of Empire and of war? How do we make our home in a hypermobile world without remembering our pasts?
Patrick Joyce\u2019s parents moved from Ireland in the 1930s and made their home in west London. But they never really left the homeland. And so as he grew up among the streets of Paddington and Notting Hill and when he visited his family in Ireland, he felt a tension between notions of home, nation and belonging. Going to My Father\u2019s House<\/em> charts the historian\u2019s attempt to make sense of these ties and to see how they manifest in a globalised world. He explores the places\u2014the house, the street, the walls and the graves\u2014that formed his own identity. He asks what place the ideas of history, heritage and nostalgia have in creating a sense of our selves. He concludes with a plea for a history that holds the past to account but also allows for dynamic, inclusive change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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