Though English folk culture and customs have long fascinated Zakia Sewell, her book Finding Albion: Myth, Folklore and the Quest for a Hidden Britain is being published at an eerily prescient time. When a rash of St George’s flags spread across the country in 2025 as a confused and confusing symbol of national pride, it was clear what the flag-defenders’ vision of Britain was: white, anti-immigrant, fuelled by far-right racist narratives.

In that context, it’s hard to feel particularly, and publicly, proud of being British or English. But in Finding Albion there is a way, through folk traditions, practices and seasonal celebrations, that Sewell posits might be a starting point in countering these narratives. The book builds on her audio series for BBC Radio 4 My Albion, in which Sewell unpicked whether she can really have a sense of belonging in Britain as a person who is both English and from Carriacou in the Caribbean. Each chapter follows the Wheel of the Year, a pagan way of measuring the year into eight annual festivals marking the change of seasons, and sees Sewell charting a path through different narratives of Britain by visiting different festivals all over the UK. Starting in Glastonbury on the spring equinox, Sewell takes us through pagan traditions, Welsh folklore, Yorkshire ghost tours and more.

Sewell is deliberate about asking the difficult questions and keeping the uncomfortable parts of Britain’s colonial past front of mind: no twee outfits or naff dancing here. What emerges is a picture of Britain that is far more radical and ridiculous than your history lessons would have you believe; from poachers protesting their right to hunt game against laws that restricted this to landowners only to the formation of new traditions in Cornwall helping to bring communities together, Sewell charts a course to Albion that invites us all to do the difficult work of remembrance so that action in the right direction is then possible.

Over Zoom, we discuss the ways that we can enact this as individuals and as communities, how she feels the book contributes to the present moment and places to go in Britain to commune with the spirit of Albion.

How did you arrive at the structure of the book, and how did you filter which celebrations to visit at each point?re

Zakia Sewell: Following the Wheel of the Year lends a narrative arc: you start with the promise of spring, setting out on a quest with the buds and crocuses just coming out of the soil, through the peak of summer into dark winter days and then back around into light again. That structure really lends itself to the theme of the book in terms of the willingness to face up to the dark aspects of our past in Britain and yet ending in a space where all hope isn’t lost. There’s still a way forward and that felt like a really lovely way to think about themes of identity, heritage, history, Britishness and folk culture. 

You’re very open about coming out of the ceremonies and celebrations that you visit with a completely different aspect or view of the world than the one you expected. Was it important to you to include the change of mind at each point?

Zakia Sewell: It was a genuine quest! Obviously I planned the structure, but I didn’t necessarily know where I was going to end up in each chapter. It sounds corny but I really wanted to let the spirit of Albion guide me. I didn’t want to impose fixed viewpoints on the reader. I wanted it to really be a genuine journey of discovery for me, so there were surprising turns. It’s also this idea of scratching beneath the surface and there being another reality: things aren’t what they seem. So I set off on a quest, hoping that I’m going to find this utopian vision of Britain and then quite early on having that challenged. Yet still managing to hold onto the hope, realising that the utopia is a distraction from the work that needs to be done. 

We need to have the enchantment and the magic, but we also need to be real and honest about the darkness of our past

How does it feel for the book to be emerging now, in the context of all the fascist narratives of England that are gaining in strength?

Zakia Sewell: It feels like this is really what is needed in this moment, but it’s a medicine that doesn’t necessarily taste that great going down. This is my offering in this very troublesome, dark, scary time that we are entering into to conjure the hope and to help people recognise the magic and mischievousness and radical aspects of British culture that have been buried. At the same time, I’m not running away from the fascist, the deeply exploitative and oppressive aspects of our history and culture as well. We need to have the enchantment and the magic, but we also need to be real and honest about the darkness of our past. When we’re being honest about that, then next there must be action. This is not about an escape into some lovely folky pastoral world that we can just dream about and return to in our minds. It’s ultimately a call to action. Anyone who lives in Britain and has spent time here, no matter your race, colour, creed, we are all beneficiaries of the wealth that this country has gained through exploitative and oppressive means. So in that sense, we’re all involved, and we should all be involved in the action required to make amends. 

The far right is so good at eliminating nuance completely, but nuance is all we have to resist their fictions. I like that your book is so full of it!

Zakia Sewell: It’s interesting because it’s like in a world of black and white, yes and no, you could either read nuance as an ambivalence or an unwillingness to choose a side, or you could see it as a radical tool that punctures and dissolves that binaristic view of the world. I think nuance can be powerful and it also allows people to make up their own mind, especially with these very difficult conversations about race and colonialism and shame and guilt.

Another aspect is the position that I’m coming from, as a person of mixed heritage, as someone who’s half white and half Black. As someone who’s grown up with the magical enchanted forests of Britain and loving all the magic folk music and felt a real deep sense of connection to the land here and felt in many ways at home here, and then this other experience of my Blackness and seeing the way that these really dark colonial legacies have very directly impacted my family — it couldn’t be a more opposite experience and there’s a lot of tension that comes from belonging to those two worlds, being the meeting point of these two challenging histories. But what I’ve tried to harness as a creative power is the ability to hold both at once. To be able to hold both the darkness and the light, the hope and the despair at once, and that is extremely important. That’s life! 

You’re very honest in the book about the fact that a lot of these folk spaces have been quite racist, like some Morris sides continuing to do black face. What are your hopes for the contemporary folk revival?

Zakia Sewell: Many of these folk seasonal customs are practised by communities who are historically and currently disenfranchised: working classes, coal mining communities. People who were excluded from dominant forms of culture. It’s been a way historically that people who are disenfranchised and oppressed can have a little bit of joy and also a bit of collective power. This is not an excusing the Morris sides [dance groups] who use black face or anything like that. I don’t know what the answer is to that, but there’s something really hopeful about the new traditions that are popping up. For example, the people reviving the hunting of the wren in Oswestry are trying to get the recent Bulgarian and Ukrainian residents involved this year, using it as an opportunity to bridge gaps and build community between different cultures. They’re not burdened with the fact that they have to honour tradition or do it a certain way, or that they’re going to piss people off by changing the traditions to make it diverse.

That’s what’s so wonderful about this contemporary folk revival. Obviously in the musical revival of the 60s, you had a few Black singers, people like Davey Graham and Dorris Henderson, but they were really anomalies. Whereas now I feel like it’s incredible. Angeline Morrison has just started the Black British Folk Collective, and recently led an event at Cecil Sharp House where people from all over the world shared their folk songs. I’m actually getting shivers thinking about it, because that to me was the radical and really healing power of folk, and a hope for the kinds of events and customs that we might see emerge.

Are there any practices that you keep to regularly and where is your favourite place in Britain to go and commune with the energies of Albion?

Zakia Sewell: I have started following the Wheel of the Year, but I honour it in a much more personal way, whether it’s a small ritual of doing some journalling and lighting a candle and going out for a nice walk on the spring equinox. Just noticing it, noticing that the equinox has come. The act of noticing is so important in a world where we’re so disconnected from nature’s shifts and cycles and again it goes back to these small acts, noticing the subtle shifts in the landscape and the year passing and making an effort to connect with that. 

I would suggest going to Avebury stone circle. It’s incredible. It’s so strange. The stones are all among the houses and there’s a pub in the middle of it. And unlike Stonehenge which is obviously fenced off most of the year, with Avebury you can get really up close and personal with the stones. There’s this incredible walk that you can do that links up the Avebury stone circle with Silbury Hill which is just this massive mysterious mound that no one knows why it’s there but I find that it’s a very powerful place, it’s shrouded in so much mystery. It also just made me laugh whenever I go and see it cos you just think like what were they doing? Why did they put all this effort into creating this huge mound, but there’s no reason why. It’s not a burial mound or nobody knows why they did it. Who knows — there might not be any spiritual meaning. But I just love the mystery of it.

Finding Albion: Myth, Folklore and the Quest for a Hidden Britain is out March 19.