The history (as opposed to the legal and sociological) study of refugees is still in its infancy, and in this respect the United Kingdom—despite its long and rich history of such movements—is no exception. Becky Taylor's excellent Refugees in Twentieth-Century Britain: A History is thus a most welcome and important addition to modern British history and timely as the world refugee crisis literally has come closer to Britain's shores. In her first chapter, devoted to the reception of refugees from Nazism, Taylor notes how in 1938, newspapers were full of stories of refugees entering Britain via small boats. These refugees, in the light of the Holocaust, have now been validated and regarded as genuine, yet at the time they were labeled illegal, just as the thousands attempting to do so from France today are, hundreds tragically drowning in the process. This then is a book for now as much as an understanding of then.

Apart from a few earlier celebratory accounts, my own work with Katharine Knox, Refugees in an Age of Genocide: Global, National and Local Perspectives during the Twentieth Century (1999), was the first to provide a history of refugees in twentieth-century Britain. Our emphasis was on the life stories of refugees and those who welcomed, and sometimes rejected them. Taylor's focus is different: she examines the way that the British state, both nationally and locally, responded to refugee entry and settlement and how civil society more generally responded to them over time. The result is a remarkable, forensic analysis of citizenship and where the refugee fits into this concept and what they have been entitled to receive (or not).

This could be dull, bureaucratic history, yet it is anything but. Alongside extensive research in a range of national and local archives, Taylor brings a commitment and indeed passion to her subject matter. While the refugees themselves may only be occasionally quoted, right through the book and its four major case studies, Taylor always keeps to the fore the impact of policies on the refugees, including responses that ranged from apathy to empathy and recognition of humanity and the traumas they had experienced. The refugees are presented as having agency, even if power often rested outside their full control. And while the subject matter is not always happy reading, there are moments of light and humor that ease the task of the reader. In February 1957, Hungarians in a reception camp were given a speech explaining the oddity of the “English national character” (112), parodied so brilliantly by an earlier Hungarian refugee, George Mikes, in How to be an Alien (1946). The climate, the speaker suggested to her (no doubt confused and dislocated) audience, was of key importance in understanding their hosts and their world outlook. It was posited that “frequent change discourages any dogmatic assertion concerning future events and fosters a practical approach to problems as they arise” (113). The speaker apologized for the lack of clearly defined “natural seasons” but stated that it was compensated by an adherence to the calendar that would give them hope as they festered in a cold and basic reception camp: “The turn of everything and everybody comes round in due course; be not impatient, everybody's turn will come” (113).

While there are references to earlier periods, the chronological focus is from the 1930s through to the 1980s—or from the refugees (Jewish and non-Jewish) from Nazism to the Hungarians in the 1950s, the Ugandan Asians in the 1970s, and the Vietnamese in the 1980s. The existing historiography is longest and most sustained in the first case study, ranging from self-congratulatory through to critical texts in terms of Britain's refugee policy during the 1930s and the treatment of those that managed to get there. It is, however, a mark of Taylor's achievement that she brings a fresh perspective and understanding to this well-trodden field, exploring especially the role of refugee organizations that worked so closely with the British state and what was and was not provided for the refugees. The coverage is also extremely helpful, moving to the less-well-known treatment of those who managed to get to Britain in 1940 following the Nazi blitzkrieg in Western Europe, taking the treatment of the subject beyond the study only of the Jewish plight and enabling a more contextualized understanding of responses.

Taylor's ambitious timeframe allows movement from the 1930s and the Second World War, to post-1945 and the creation of the welfare state. It also allows consideration of nonwhite refugees, the colonial legacy, and racist responses to migrants. From the 1970s, a policy of trying to disperse refugees, in part to avoid giving ammunition to anti-immigrant and neofascist organizations, was employed by national governments, both Labour and Conservative. This put huge responsibilities on the local state structure and also nongovernmental organizations. In the 1930s, there was little tension between the nongovernmental organizations and the state, even in the selection of refugees for entry, but this was not the case from the 1970s. Activists within the wide range of bodies set up resisted some of the policies the state had hoped they would carry out, and were sympathetic to the younger, more rebellious refugees who in the official mind were making “nuisances of themselves” (176). What makes Taylor's book so convincing is that she puts the treatment of these refugees in the context of wider political issues of the time such as housing and poverty. The chapter on the Vietnamese, for example, is titled “Marketisation and Multiculturalism,” reflecting different directions and tensions in Thatcherite Britain.

In the conclusion, Taylor takes the story to the end of the twentieth century and an array of asylum legislation that is still ongoing. Taylor has thus provided a brilliant analysis that adds to other recent studies, such as Jordanna Bailkin's Unsettled: Refugee Camps and the Making of Multicultural Britain (2018). The scholar of modern Britain has thus no excuse for not incorporating into their work both the refugee experience and responses to them from state and public alike.