A review of the Book of Bradford
words by Jocelyn Howarth
When one thinks of Britain, there are a number of things that come to mind. Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen. London, One Direction, the Royal Family. Red telephone boxes. Black taxis. Big Ben. Arguably, all positive things (let’s not delve into the Royal Family right now). All things recognisable to someone who isn’t British. All reasons to feel pride about the country one lives in.
In recent years, patriotism for the country has waned. The rise of the internet, and subsequently social media, has brought to light the long, bloody history of Great Britain’s colonisation, slavery, and oppression of people all over the world, including its own citizens, to be examined under a clear lens. Whatever national pride existed a hundred years ago that made young boys eager to die for their country does not exist today, and no amount of Your Country Needs You could bring it back.
While British pride is fading, another type of pride prevails: the pride for where you live. Not the country, but the town. Or city. It is a sense of pride that transcends generations; university students will defend their hometown to the death despite having chosen a place at the other end of the country just to be as far away from their home as possible. Your grandparents, who have lived in the same house their whole life, will reminisce about the days when that street was called something different, when that Sainsbury’s was a scrap yard, when that housing estate was a horse field. It is a pride that can be found in Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, London, Leeds, Brighton, Kent or any of the other, smaller, unknown places in between. Even if the place where one lives is objectively unpleasant, there’s no place like home.
Amongst the cities and towns that go overlooked is Bradford. Some may know Bradford for having been the world’s wool-trade centre for hundreds of years; others, perhaps younger readers, will know of Bradford because it is the home of Zayn Malik. The rest may know of someone who was from Bradford, or have some vague idea of it with no concrete knowledge to back it up, or simply not know anything at all and wonder what could possibly be so interesting about Bradford for it to have an entire collection of short stories published about it.
The Book of Bradford, edited by Saima Mir, is a vibrant cluster of short stories written by people to whom Bradford means a lot. To whom Bradford is, or was, home. Mir’s introduction is fierce and informative, introducing Bradford with a frankness and fondness that only a resident could know, with a pride recognisable to all across the UK no matter where they live. She succinctly explores the rise and fall and rise again of the city’s reputation, the tragedies and the triumphs, the staggering figures of British culture (the Brontës and David Hockney, to say the least), and the diversity of its residents.
In light of Bradford being named the 2025 City of Culture, this collection portrays the city’s worthiness of such a title. A number of these short stories explore Bradford through fantastical elements, including ghosts and unexpected time-travel, bridging the gap between the Bradford of the past and the Bradford of today, going back as far as 1316. The first story in the collection, titled ‘The Wickedest Man in the World’, by David Barnett, features two wildly contrasting characters: 1905’s Mr. Crowley, a practitioner of magick based on the real life English occultist Aleister Crowley who visits Bradford to share his findings from Egypt with a group of men known as the Order of the Golden Dawn, and 2025’s Lili, a girl who has run away from home to escape the violence of her stepdad and the apathy of her mother. 110 years apart, the pair bridge the gap in their social standings and eras when a strange mist descends the streets of Bradford and brings them together to explore the idea of responsibility and the meaning of goodness. Theirs is a discussion filled with disarming vulnerability and works as a strong opener to introduce the reader to the many roles of Bradford across history through two clear voices. Further on in the book comes ‘The Homecoming’ by Lesley McEvoy, a simple story of a woman returning to the Bradford moors to scatter her dad’s ashes. There she encounters an oddly-dressed woman who reminisces about an unknown person mysteriously preventing a massacre intended by Thomas Fairfax in the vicinity. This linking of past and present further brings to light the city’s individuals and not just the place as an institution, reinforcing the consistent theme of this collection that Bradford is a people as much as it is a place.
A place with history is inevitably a place with tragedy, and Bradford is not exempt from this. Two of the stories from this compilation centre around the Bradford city stadium fire in 1985. Leonora, the protagonist in ‘Fire Next Time’ by Marcia Hutchinson, witnesses this devastation on television while at university, and reflects back on the destructive thread of fire that has followed her in life. During childhood, a fire, which started in her room when a paraffin heater was accidentally knocked over, left a scar on her hand. As a young woman, in order to earn money for university, Leonora worked at a club which hosted weekly discos and attracted a diverse range of young people, all there to dance and have fun. When this club burned down, a group of ‘skinheads’ who were loitering as Leonora locked up were the natural suspects, but the police dismissed the suggestion. Sitting with her Oxford university friends, watching the stadium burn, Leonora looks back on how these events shaped her, how they meshed with her own personal ambition and isolation from her community. The other story about this fire, ‘One of Our Own’ by Ross Raisin, reflects on the event on its anniversary through the eyes of someone who was there, weaving the truths of complex family dynamics with the terror and pain of the day and its aftermath. It is a tender commemoration of the victims of the fire and the community it affected and a symbol of Bradford’s persistence and hope in the face of death.
The diversity of Bradford, acting as a home to people from many cultures and countries, is known throughout the country; it might be one of the things it is best known for. Most of the stories in this collection celebrate such diversity by giving a raw, non-glamourised insight into the everyday lives of its citizens. Standouts include ‘Madam Doctor and the Tea Lady’ by Sairish Hussain, which showcases mental health struggles across all circumstances and the power of an honest chat, and ‘Aroma. Taste. Sweet. Centre.’ by Nick Ahad, which invokes the sense of smell as a powerful doorway to memories, confronting the relationship between a father who endured extensive hate after entering a mixed-race marriage and his son who, upon visiting a place where they used to go as a family, feels the identity struggle such a marriage caused for him. Along the same lines, Abda Khan’s ‘Samosas and Parkin’ explores the bonds developed over food and how it can create lasting memories. It is a tender story about the importance of friendship, respect, and solidarity in the face of bigotry, centring around the friendship between two neighbours whose relationship evolves from their sharing of food.
The writing of these collected stories is mostly strong and fluid. There were a few instances where a stream-of-consciousness narrative became too much of a ramble to be easily followed or invested in, but otherwise the prose was eloquent and evocative. The many voices of Bradford were conveyed boldly and fondly, with an appreciation for the accents and slang that characterise the people of the city. Despite no two stories being the same and no two characters being much alike, this collection as a whole makes a reader who has never set foot in the city feel as if it was familiar. The common theme between all stories is that Bradford is home, and hence can be treated with as much love and nuance as one would give their own house. It is also a reminder that a place is defined by the eyes of those who live there, therefore never being just one simple thing. Bradford as the 2025 City of Culture could not have been more proudly or honestly represented than in this collection of rich and deeply human stories.