Nationality:Wog: The Hounding of David Oluwale [Hardcover]

'Aspden's meticulous work does justice to a largely forgotten case.'

A brilliant, fascinating book which revives the memory of David
Oluwale and tells his story as it should be told.

'Kester Aspden's brilliant book is extremely comprehensive,
involving painstaking research. It deserves to be studied.'

A fascinating, well-researched and chilling narrative

'Nationality: Wog tells the harsh reality of a period which is
often looked back on with nostalgia'

`...painstaking research, empathetic approach and ability to weave together
a vivid...social critique...This tenderly compiled book will still make you
weep'

"Aspden writes compassionately of his character, weaving
information into a gripping narrative...with a novelist's skill"

'This is a shocking and engrossing story...the book is a kind of
In Cold Blood set in Leeds.'

`The new David Peace, we're saying.'

'This excellent and detailed book... Makes the reader confront
difficult questions about racism, policing and the care of the mentally
ill, questions that are still with us today.'

When the body of David Oluwale, a rough sleeper with a criminal record and a history of mental illness, was pulled out of the River Aire near Leeds in May 1969, nobody asked too many questions about the circumstances of his death. A police charge sheet from three months before had 'UK' scored out, and his nationality replaced with a handwritten 'WOG'. This 'social nuisance' went unmourned to a pauper's grave. A year and a half later, rumours that the Nigerian man had been subject to a lengthy campaign of abuse from two police officers led to the opening of the grave and a difficult criminal investigation. Drawing on original archival material only just released into the public domain, and interviews with police officers and lawyers involved in the eventual prosecution of two Leeds City Police officers, Kester Aspden's chilling book revisits one of the most notorious racist crimes in British history. David Oluwale came to Britain as a stowaway in 1949. He also came as a British subject and citizen with a belief that 'the Mother Country' was a place of fairness and liberty and law. Nationality: Wog is not just the forensic examination of a crime; in his imaginative reconstruction of the life and death of this obscure man Kester Aspden exposes Britain's belligerent and painful response to the fact that black people were part of the national story. It raises questions as relevant today as they were at the end of the 1960s.

Kester Aspden was born in Toronto in 1968, and raised in Todmorden, West Yorkshire, and York. He has a doctorate in history from Cambridge University, and taught history of crime at Leeds University whilst researching this book. He now lives in Istanbul.