There are serious and important discussions to be had around the topic of race, colour and British identities that Hirsch is dealing with and it's good that she has set out her stall so firmly - however, this is a messy book in lots of ways that seems to suffer from its own identity crisis (is it a personal memoir of an individual's experience? a history of race relations in Britain? an analysis of the systemic constructs which create 'race'?)

At times Hirsch speaks for herself - at others she seems to take it upon herself to speak for all those 'others', whether black, brown-skinned, Asian, mixed race... which seems a tad patronising, assuming that you can voice someone else's experience, tell their story, articulate their problems, on their behalf.

There are moments when Hirsch falls back into mindless simplicity: in speaking of Islamic terrorism, for example: <i>'The problem, to me, is the reason they choose an extreme version of their faith and use it to craft all-encompassing identities. In many cases, it seems less like the result of a proactive decision, and more the result of finding doors to other identities in Britain closed in their face.'</i> Well, gosh! How insulting! That anyone who finds themselves the object of racism will fall into terrorism! As if you can't be the victim of racism and still maintain a moral integrity and self-identity that excludes extremism and violence.

To be fair, Hirsch isn't usually this simplistic. Her stories of her own experience as a mixed-race girl in middle-class Wimbledon are shocking. All the same, I was interested in the fact that she identifies so strongly with being black (or 'black') when she's half Ghanaian, a quarter Yorkshire English, and a quarter Jewish. Rather than embracing her own 'multiculturalism', she seems to have narrowed down her own identity, notwithstanding her self-confessed privilege (private school, Oxford, Inns of Court).

At times this is perhaps too strident, at others too subjective and polemical - all the same, it's worth reading, even if you disagree, as a way of finding your own stance on what it means to be British in today's world.

3.5 stars.