StoryPromptQuestions to ask about coming to Britain
A lot of British families have someone who arrived rather than someone who was born here — and that story gets asked about even less than the rest, because nobody's quite sure where to start.
Most lists of questions for an older relative assume they grew up a few miles from where they live now. For a lot of British families that isn't the story — someone in the family arrived from somewhere else, at some point, for some reason, and the questions that would open that up tend not to get asked at all. Partly because it can feel like a big, loaded subject to raise. Mostly because nobody's handed over the specific version.
This isn't one story. A grandparent who came on the Windrush in 1948 had a completely different journey from one who flew in from Hong Kong in 2021, or from Uganda in 1972 with ninety days to leave everything behind. The questions below work across all of them because they ask about the actual mechanics of arriving somewhere, not about an abstract feeling of "what was it like to immigrate".
A few of the real routes, and when they happened
| Route | The facts |
|---|---|
| The Windrush generation | Empire Windrush arrived at Tilbury on 22 June 1948 with just over a thousand people aboard. The British Nationality Act 1948, in force from 1 January 1949, made everyone born in Britain or a British colony a Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies. The National Archives describes the passengers as exercising their right of entry and settlement through that Act; they became known as the Windrush generation. |
| Ugandan Asian expulsion | On 4 August 1972 Idi Amin ordered Uganda's Asian population to leave within 90 days. The first flight to the UK arrived on 18 September 1972, and by 9 November more than 27,000 people had come — the National Archives puts the total at just over 28,000. |
| Hong Kong BN(O) visa | The UK opened a visa route for British National (Overseas) status holders and their families on 31 January 2021, after the National Security Law was imposed on Hong Kong. |
What to actually ask
"What was it like to move here?" is too big to answer well — the same problem every other page on this site runs into with "tell me about your life". Ask about one specific moment in the journey instead, and you get an actual story rather than a summary that's been given at family gatherings for years.
Coming to Britain
- 01How did you actually travel — by boat, by plane — and how long did it take?
- 02Who made the decision to come, and were you part of that conversation or told afterwards?
- 03What did you pack? Is there anything you brought that you still have?
- 04Who was waiting for you when you arrived, if anyone?
- 05Where did you spend the first night, and what do you remember about it?
- 06What was the weather like when you landed, and how did that strike you?
- 07What did you think Britain would be like before you got here — and how wrong were you?
- 08What was the first thing you had to work out for yourself — money, food, how to get around?
- 09Did you speak English before you arrived? If not, how did you learn?
- 10Was there a particular person or family who helped you in the first few weeks?
- 11What did you miss most in the first year that you didn't expect to miss?
- 12What's something you had to explain to people here that you'd never had to explain before?
- 13Did you always plan to stay, or did that happen gradually?
- 14What's the first place in Britain that felt like it was yours?
- 15What would you want your grandchildren to know about why they're here?
A good follow-up to almost any of these is simply "and then what happened" — the detail that comes after the first answer is usually the better part of the story.
Worth saying plainly
The weekly prompt bank StoryPrompt sends doesn't have a question written specifically for this — it's fifty-two questions covering a lot of British life, not every version of it, and this page says so rather than implying otherwise. If this particular story is the one your family most needs on record, ask it directly and write the answer down yourself today; it works exactly as well for free as it would as one more week among the fifty-two. The free 100-question list and how to get your parents to talk about their past both go further on the asking itself.
Where StoryPrompt does help is afterwards: once there's an answer worth keeping — this one or any other — it needs somewhere to live that isn't a notes app or a voice memo nobody replays. StoryPrompt emails one question a week for a year and compiles every typed answer into a book you can download as it grows, and keep after the year ends.
One question a week, for a year — £25
Written for a British life, in all the different ways that turns out to mean. A book that keeps growing from the first answer onward.
See what £25 includesOr try the first 3 questions free, no card needed.