No place to call home Inside the real lives of gypsies and travellers

Since the 1500s, gypsies and travelers have been part of the European lore of traveling entertainers and tinkerers, with a taint of thievery and mischief, alternately romanticized and vilified. Reporter Quarmby focuses on their lives in the UK, having sought safety from the Holocaust and, for Irish Travelers, more recently, from the Troubles in Ireland, only to find a growing backlash against travelers and immigrants among the settled. Quarmby spent six years talking to gypsies and travelers, their opponents and activists, including members of the Occupy Movement who have taken up their cause. She also chronicles growing resistance among the gypsies themselves as they assert their civil and human right to maintain a vibrant culture long struggling to hold its people and families together. Quarmby details their experiences of prejudice, forced eviction, and obstacles to education and other basic public services. The eviction of gypsies from Dale Farm forms the focus of a fascinating look at the interplay across decades of anti-gypsy sentiment with issues of poverty, immigration, and countercultural groups as they influence local and national politics.--Bush, Vanessa Copyright 2010 Booklist

A journalist's occasionally overdone sociohistorical study of conflicts between the Gypsy community and settled communities in the U.K. Quarmby's involvement with British Gypsies and other traveling people began in 2006 when she covered one such group for the Economist. A Roma community at Dale Farm in Essex had caused a furor among members of the settled community. Gypsies owned the property, which, like so many other Roma-owned lands, was "undesirable" because it had been used as a waste site. But they did not have permission from the area's district council to use it as a caravan park. By 2011, the conflict made international headlines and ended with the eventual eviction of the encamped Romas. Quarmby's quest to understand the British Gypsies, Irish and New (non-Roma) Travelers took her to similar communities all around England and Scotland, where she learned about the devastating toll the centuries-old struggle has had on Gypsies and their families. Quarmby discovered that Romas were now turning to religion and, in particular, the Pentecostal Church, which she believes "will be the most likely source of political leadership in the coming years." The author's commitment to telling the story of a misunderstood and persecuted people is admirable, but for all its meticulous attention to detail, the book suffers in places from overquoting and going too deeply into the life histories of her many subjects. The result is an overwrought narrative that verges on ponderous. Quarmby's zeal is understandable, however. It is only recently that Gypsies, voiceless for centuries, have begun to access and/or create the platforms necessary to be heard. Informative but flawed treatment of a vast, intriguing topic.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

From chapter 1, 'Chance of a Lifetime': He was waiting outside a station for me, an unassuming, quietly spoken man, wearing a trilby hat, which was his trademark. The fine April morning suited Essex, particularly this part of the Essex countryside, where the garden centres and the houses start to run out until you turn a corner on a dusty, hole-pocked road and find yourself in view of a Traveller site. The man in the trilby was Grattan Puxon, who had been campaigning for Traveller sites for over forty years before this trip in 2006 to visit Dale Farm. From the outside, it had all the trappings of a place under siege -- the heavy gate made of scaffolding poles barred the way in, though a banner inscribed "Save Dale Farm" waved invitingly. Dale Farm, billed by the authorities and the media as the largest encampment of Gypsies and Travellers in Britain, sprawled over several acres and was home to about one thousand people. Some of the pitches had barbed wire running along their perimeters. Grattan turned right onto the grandly named Camellia Drive and came to a cream-coloured chalet set in an immaculate pitch, which was decked out with flowers in pots. A low, red brick wall with statues of lions proudly sitting on the gateposts greeted you as you approached the home of Mary Ann McCarthy. Mary Ann, a softly spoken grandmother of seven with dark, carefully set hair, welcomed us into her spotless chalet. Grattan and I sat down on her cream three-piece suite, covered in plastic to protect the fabric, and were offered cups of strong tea. In the kitchen, one of Mary Ann's five daughters was hard at work, scrubbing out every single cupboard. Most people from the 'settled community' have heard that Traveller sites and homes are dirty places -- a pernicious myth. The chalet was tidy and clearly cherished, with alcoves built to show off statues of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, alongside Mary Ann's Crown Derby china and lovingly dusted wax flowers and fruit. In 2004 she had taken the fateful decision to move to Dale Farm. "It was government guidance; they told us that Gypsies and Travellers should provide for themselves, so we did that. We bought the scrap-yard, one half of it was already passed for planning permission and our relations were living there." Her five daughters and son-in-law lived on the site, and she had grandchildren dashing in and out of the chalet before and after school. She was learning how to read for the first time. She and her grandchildren would pore over the easy readers from school, learning together. 'Dale Farm is the chance of a lifetime. We can get education, start to use computers and all. We won't have the time to get education if we get moved from post to pillar again', Mary Ann told us. 'We want to live like human beings, not like rats.' Dale Farm was the epitome of a settled, matronly, Traveller's life. 'We get smothered living in a house; we feel like we have been put in jail' -- her chalet was the perfect home. But her wish, to be left alone to live with her family in a close-knit community, was not to be. Excerpted from No Place to Call Home: Inside the Real Lives of Gypsies and Travellers by Katharine Quarmby All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.