Marina Wheeler – Cuckfield Book Festival 2021

The Lost Homestead is a story about loss and new beginnings, personal and political freedom; about coming to terms with the past, and about the stories we choose to tell about ourselves. Its central event is the Partition of British India in 1947, when Marina's mother Dip and her Sikh family were forced to flee their home. Some years after Partition, Dip was again 'displaced', this time by choice, when she married Marina's English father, Charles Wheeler, and left India for good. In The Lost Homestead Marina delves into her family's past. She writes about a world left behind when the Punjab was divided, and about how the new nations and peoples struggled to recover from the horror of this event. The Financial Times called it ... 'A deeply personal story of identity and a highly relatable journey for many in the diaspora... Wheeler taps a rich vein of personal history... Evocative... Gripping.' Marina is an Anglo-Indian, London-based barrister specialising in constitutional and human rights law. She was made Queen's Counsel in 2016 and also teaches mediation and conflict resolution. Julian Worricker, without whom Cuckfest wouldn't be the same, is a familiar BBC R4 voice and will be talking to Marina.