ABSTRACT
Colin Holmes' pioneering work encouraged the emergence of a substantial historiography which testifies to historical traditions of intolerance towards different immigrant communities in Britain since the mid-nineteenth century. Yet, traditionally, there has been a tendency within British Italian texts dedicated to recovering the histories of the Italian presence in the United Kingdom to portray the Italians as somehow immune from the difficulties faced by other ethnic minority groups. The chapter presents the evolution of the historiography of the British Italian migrant experience, acknowledging the groundbreaking contributions of scholars such as Terri Colpi and Lucio Sponza whilst also mapping more recent works which focus on questions of war, identities and memory. The Italians are considered a long-established migrant group, having started to arrive in Britain in significant numbers in the mid-nineteenth century. The early recovery work of Italian migrant experience in Britain was undertaken by geographers rather than historians.
