Told using a mix of transcript from recorded interviews and narrative, A Circle of Five offers a portrait of five women from the Windrush Generation. We follow them through their early lives, their arrival in the UK, and how their lives play out here. We get insight into a range of experiences, from starting families to facing racism in the workplace.

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I could have done with a bit more introspection. At times it was very cut and dry: ‘this happened then this happened and then this happened’, without space for us to understand their intentions, motivations or inner thoughts. Which I realise is difficult when it comes to biographies/interviews.

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These women are in their 80s and most of them devout Christians, so their opinions can be somewhat outdated. One of them states she doesn’t ‘believe in homosexuals or lesbians’ in the last 30 pages. After she suspects the new pastor at her church is a lesbian, she moves to a different church that believes homosexuality is a sin. As a queer woman reading that, oh boy.

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For the most part, these are stories that deserve to be told, but I don’t think the execution was performed as well as it could have been. If someone were to take this material and make a novel out of it (or several novels), or perhaps a docu-series, that would work better I think.