Going to My Father's House: A History of My Times

A historian's personal journey into the complex questions of immigration, home and nation

From Ireland to London in the 1950s, Derry in the Troubles to contemporary, de-industrialised Manchester, Joyce finds the 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's 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 the notions of home, nation and belonging. Going to My Father's House charts the historian's attempt to make sense of these ties and to see how they manifest in a globalised world. He explores the places - the house, the street, the walls and the graves - that formed his own identity. He ask 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.

Author: Patrick Joyce
Publisher: Verso
Published: 07/27/2021
Pages: 368
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.15lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.30w x 1.20d
ISBN13: 9781839763243
ISBN10: 1839763248
BISAC Categories:
- Biography & Autobiography | Political
- Political Science | History & Theory | General
- Political Science | Commentary & Opinion

About the Author
Patrick Joyce is Emeritus Professor of History, University of Manchester. He is a leading British social historian and has written and edited numerous books of social and political history, including The Rule of Freedom (2003), Material Powers (2010) and The State of Freedom (2013).