YouSaid · the spoken record

Zakia Sewell

lines on the record: 32
first: 2026-03-20
most recent: 2026-03-20
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Where should I start digging in order to find kind of artifacts or different ways of thinking about who we are here that could sort of offer hope, you know, that can offer a counter vision to the extremely powerful negative vision being conjured currently by the far right? And perhaps for others, it will be ritual and older stories. But I totally accept that other people will have entirely different visions. And I think that that is what is important. I think a collective endeavor is, I think that what is needed is a kind of collective conjuring. It's a kind of collective work that is required that all of us who kind of reject the exclusionary aspects and visions of Britishness that are so dominant, well, okay, we need to do some work to find out what the alternatives are. This is my path. This is my personal quest. But I hope that others feel inspired to sort of go.”
2026-03-20 · Intelligence Squared · Why Are Ancient Myths Resurfacing in Modern Britain? With Zakia Sewell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, yeah, Morris Dancing is not. I'm not out here trying to suggest that everybody, you know, should start Morris dancing. I understand that folk culture is not for everyone. And for me, this is one kind of theme of our heritage and culture that I've been particularly drawn to, that I have sort of sort of digging, that I've sort of started digging at in order to sort of unveil these alternative visions. I kind of totally respect that that might not be the same for everyone. But in the end, at the end of the book, I kind of invite readers to sort of go forth on their own quest. And that quest doesn't necessarily have to be won into folk culture, but rather it's an invitation to sort of seek to sort of reflect and think about, well, what are those aspects of Britishness, of our past, of our culture that are kind of magical enchanted to me?”
2026-03-20 · Intelligence Squared · Why Are Ancient Myths Resurfacing in Modern Britain? With Zakia Sewell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think that this is absolutely a culture rooted in the traditions of the past, but as I sort of discovered through the writing of the book and through talking to kind of contemporary folk practitioners, it is absolutely a living tradition, you know, that there are new folk customs being dreamed up all of the time, either ones that are being revived from older customs and practices or completely new traditions. I spoke to one group of people who were sort of blending sound system culture with pagan ritual and I just thought that amazing that is a symbol of modern Britain, a semi-leaded one. Folk is all around us. It is not just the kind of Morris dancer dancing in the way that his ancestors did. Folk can be a group of people getting together in London and, you know,”
2026-03-20 · Intelligence Squared · Why Are Ancient Myths Resurfacing in Modern Britain? With Zakia Sewell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Kind of explodes our image of Roman Britain. It wasn't just this one North African Empire, which has kind of been the kind of story that has been told again and again. Actually, when they kind of conducted analysis on other burials in that site, they found that up to 10% of them had roots in Africa. So here we have this potentially mixed-race woman living in Roman York of high status. And it just completely challenges so many of the kind of dominant and exclusionary narratives about the British past being kind of exclusively white. So yes, for me and I think for many others, she kind of represents a kind of an ancestor that we can all connect to. There were people like us here a long, long time ago and they had status and they had wealth and they were respected. And we can tell that from the way that this ivory bank or lady was buried.”
2026-03-20 · Intelligence Squared · Why Are Ancient Myths Resurfacing in Modern Britain? With Zakia Sewell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The Ivory Bangle lady, a skeleton who was discovered in the early 1900s in a back garden in York, and that's where I kind of go to try and commune with her spirit in the book. She was found in an area, in an area of Roman burials. She was found with sumptuous grave goods, you know, these kind of gorgeous bangles made of ivory and jet from York. And, you know, she was a woman of high status. But what surprised the archaeologists when they kind of did later tests on her bones was that she was most likely of mixed racial origin. She had roots in North Africa, much like the Roman emperor Septimius Severus, who lived and ruled in York, but she had, there was evidence of both black and white ancestral traits, which completely”
2026-03-20 · Intelligence Squared · Why Are Ancient Myths Resurfacing in Modern Britain? With Zakia Sewell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Where they kind of drew very deliberately upon their kind of older stories and older symbols in order to sort of cultivate a sense of Welshness that could hold its own in the face of English oppression. Whereas the English sort of perhaps never felt the need to do that because they were the greater power and Englishness and British Britishness became the English project in a way. And we see that in the way that many of our British symbols of kind of We see that in the kind of interchangeability of Englishness in Britishness and in the fact that many of our kind of British symbols are actually when you boil it down English ones. So I think that I think that that is one of the reasons that actually Englishness can be sometimes quite difficult to locate in a way at Welshness and Scottishness are not.”
2026-03-20 · Intelligence Squared · Why Are Ancient Myths Resurfacing in Modern Britain? With Zakia Sewell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think for a long time as kind of independent sense of Englishness, wasn't necessarily cultivated or valued in the same way that it was for the Welsh and the Scots. And that's because Welsh national identity and Scottish national identity were in many ways sort of defined in opposition to Englishness or defined in opposition to Englishness with England being the kind of greater dominant sort of colonial power within the nations of Great Britain. So in the 18th and 19th centuries Welsh national identity, sort of the kind of the symbols and the stories of Welshness as we know them today were kind of consciously constructed. You know, there was a great kind of flourishing of national consciousness in ways.”
2026-03-20 · Intelligence Squared · Why Are Ancient Myths Resurfacing in Modern Britain? With Zakia Sewell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“An incredible work done to unveil and make visible those dark histories of empire that actually counter that vision. But there's no middle ground and I hope that my book can sort of offer a bit of that.”
2026-03-20 · Intelligence Squared · Why Are Ancient Myths Resurfacing in Modern Britain? With Zakia Sewell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“19th and 20th century. So Albion is no escape from these dark aspects of our past. In fact, what I hope and what my kind of mission, I suppose, is, is to say we cannot escape these dark aspects of who we are and who we've been in Britain. What we need are stories that can hold that darkness without being entirely eclipsed by it. You know, we need to be able to see the magic, see the kind of this hopeful stories of radical activism and yet not use those to run away from our dark imperial past. And the only way forward is a truthful, honest way forward that can actually hold both of those truths and both of those realities at once. And I think that that's what we're missing. We've kind of got the story of Britain that is all about kind of success monarchy, military, that really doesn't appeal to a lot of people. And in recent years, there's”
2026-03-20 · Intelligence Squared · Why Are Ancient Myths Resurfacing in Modern Britain? With Zakia Sewell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. And I think perhaps when I set off on my quest, I hope that I would discover this kind of utopian Britain, right? The kind of the magical enchanted Britain that I heard in Pentenkel's music at 15. And the reality, you know, and we all perhaps have a yearning for that escape, that fantasy. In a sense, it's what kind of ties my own quest for Arbin or my own kind of visions of Albion with the far right. You know, this fantasy time before that we can return to. But the reality is that place does not exist. And my journey, my kind of quest for Albion, rather than being an escape from those Nautia divisive, more exclusionary aspects of our past here in Britain actually kind of brought me straight into the middle of them, you know. Cecil Sharp, who was the kind of...”
2026-03-20 · Intelligence Squared · Why Are Ancient Myths Resurfacing in Modern Britain? With Zakia Sewell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think that people are feeling increasingly isolated and alone. And also, I mean, one of the other things in the book, you know, the rise in paganism is sort of corresponding with mainstream religion becoming less and less sort of viable for people or kind of less and less appealing to people. But with that, there is a kind of void of meaning. It doesn't take away the yearning that we have for stories that help us to understand who we are, where we come from and why we're here. And I think that, you know, turning to the wisdom of those who've gone before us, our ancestors who expressed their kind of way of life or their beliefs in old folk songs or in dances, in ritual acts, I think there's something grounding about returning to that wisdom in a time of deep instability and uncertainty.”
2026-03-20 · Intelligence Squared · Why Are Ancient Myths Resurfacing in Modern Britain? With Zakia Sewell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, you know, we're living through extremely trying times for many different reasons. And I think the kind of this emergent counterculture, this folk culture is sort of... Offering alternatives on many different levels. So we're living in the midst of a climate crisis, all those kind of ecological uncertainty. People, the idea of then sort of reconnecting to a seasonal cycle, to honouring and marking those kind of moments in the year of transition and change, I think is sort of offering people a kind of a grounding, a kind of a way to feel more connected to the natural world as it is sort of being destroyed. And I think that's a really important aspect for people. Obviously, politically, we're living in deeply uncertain times. The far right is on the rise. There is kind of the global conflicts. Money, you know, we're living in a cost of living crisis.”
2026-03-20 · Intelligence Squared · Why Are Ancient Myths Resurfacing in Modern Britain? With Zakia Sewell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think there's a lot more to kind of the Englishness revealed through my kind of quest for these older stories and symbols was much more than a kind of embarrassing twee Englishness. I also discovered the kind of radical histories. And in one of the chapters I'm looking at a song, an old folk song called The Rufford Park Poachers, which speaks of a clash between poachers and gamekeepers that happened in Nottinghamshire in 1851. And as with all of the traditions and customs that I sort of look at in the book, you sort of have to commune with them. You have to kind of dig beneath the surface and unpick in order to sort of absorb the wisdom.”
2026-03-20 · Intelligence Squared · Why Are Ancient Myths Resurfacing in Modern Britain? With Zakia Sewell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A tradition which the enslaved and the free people of colour were completely exiled from. So just in the history of carnival, we've kind of got this kind of entangled history, this kind of to-ing and fro-ing, this exchange of culture and tradition that is not straightforward. And I think that in that sense, it's a very useful sort of artifact for thinking about our identity and heritage in Britain.”
2026-03-20 · Intelligence Squared · Why Are Ancient Myths Resurfacing in Modern Britain? With Zakia Sewell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In Britain, but it was sort of exported to the colonies and in Karaku it's called Shakespeare Mass. And so I knew that it happened in Karaku, but I wasn't aware of similar traditions around the world. I wasn't aware of similar traditions across the Caribbean. When it comes to the carnival itself, the story of Claudia Jones, the incredible Trinidadian political activist, who started the first carnival in the late 50s, is the story that's most well known. But what people don't know is that the first carnival to happen in Nottinghill as a kind of parade around the streets of West London was very much influenced and sort of borne out of the tradition of the kind of fits and fairs, the ye oldy English fairs that used to happen across London from the 12th century onwards. And the carnival in Trinidad actually started off as a form of entertainment for the white planter class, a tradition which the”
2026-03-20 · Intelligence Squared · Why Are Ancient Myths Resurfacing in Modern Britain? With Zakia Sewell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, this is actually the chapter about the carnival is actually my favourite chapter to write. It felt like I discovered all of these incredible connections between British folk culture and Caribbean folk culture that I had no idea about. So I know that on the island where my grandparents are from, Karaku, it's so small that during the colonial era, a lot of folk traditions that were suppressed elsewhere were kind of able to survive and have been passed down. On that island, there's a tradition of kind of fiddle music that brings together Scottish reels with West African drums. There is a version of a mummer's play, which is a kind of type of travelling folk theatre that happens in England around in winter. Sorry, it's this type of folk, traveling folk drama that happens across the country here.”
2026-03-20 · Intelligence Squared · Why Are Ancient Myths Resurfacing in Modern Britain? With Zakia Sewell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it's so much more appealing to me than the kind of bombast of Raul Britannia or another kind of dominant national symbol like that. So I think, yes, it is cool. There are lots of kind of trendy young hipsters and younger people reclaiming folk culture and kind of making it cool. But I think it's also important to kind of embrace the embarrassingness of it because I think it teaches us something. I think it reveals to us this that there is this other England, there is this other Britain beneath the surface and that should be cherished.”
2026-03-20 · Intelligence Squared · Why Are Ancient Myths Resurfacing in Modern Britain? With Zakia Sewell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, also, I think that embarrassment is there, and it's kind of important. And that's sort of what's part of what draws me to these folk traditions and customs, that they're so opposite to the vision of Britishness that is it kind of exported that is conjured through our kind of more traditional stories and symbols of Britain as this kind of bastion of enlightened culture and civilization and imperial and military might actually when you when you turn up at a Morris dancing event and you see these kind of lovely blokes you probably hand stitch these kind of flamboyant costumes jumping around with you know tankards full of ale you think this is eccentric this is mischievous this is playful it's kind of humbling and i”
2026-03-20 · Intelligence Squared · Why Are Ancient Myths Resurfacing in Modern Britain? With Zakia Sewell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Whoa, as I was mentioned, for a long time I sort of thought I was just kind of strange. I thought I was just a kind of lone wolf folk weirdo. Back in 2020, I made a series called My Albion, in which this book is based. At the time, I was still kind of a lone wolf in my folk exploration and fascination. Since then, Britain has been caught up in a kind of another folk revival. And we can see this through... Somehow get a, you know, something that was for a long time seen as deathly uncool, as finding its way into mainstream culture. And I think that it speaks to a yearning that a lot of people have for, you know, it connects to this wider yearning, I think, for alternative ways of making sense of who we are, our place in the world, you know, connects to people, becoming more interested in astrology.”
2026-03-20 · Intelligence Squared · Why Are Ancient Myths Resurfacing in Modern Britain? With Zakia Sewell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, people of colour from all different walks of life, there as well. And I think that was quite surprising to me because for a long time I felt quite alone in my fascination with ancient Britain. And I think that people are beginning to recognize these points of connection that I kind of touched on, that the fact that actually when you kind of boil down to it, sort of climbing up a big hill at six o'clock in the morning on the spring equinox and breathing together, perhaps singing a song together, leaving a few offerings, you know, at the top of the hill, you know, these are kind of simple ritualistic acts that actually connect people in Britain with people all over the world. And I think that perhaps other people like me are starting to kind of”
2026-03-20 · Intelligence Squared · Why Are Ancient Myths Resurfacing in Modern Britain? With Zakia Sewell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a mixed bunch. It was a sort of raggle-taggle bunch when I went up there in research for the book. Surprisingly, it was more diverse than I thought it would be because I've been to quite a few of these kinds of rites and rituals and it's usually you have a mixture of sort of people who look very, very kind of deep in the pagan faith in robes and amulets and ladies with kind of floral wreaths and people ringing bells and people perhaps who are people you might say are kind of deep in the woo-woo but then there are lots of other kind of ordinary looking people around as well in their kind of waterproof their waterproofs and their hiking boots who perhaps you wouldn't expect to see at a kind of cosmic pagan ritual but it was also lovely to see other people like me you know a handful of black people Asian mixed race”
2026-03-20 · Intelligence Squared · Why Are Ancient Myths Resurfacing in Modern Britain? With Zakia Sewell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“or that I kind of knew about in the Caribbean. So it had this way of sort of connecting me with Britain and a kind of spirituality rooted in British soil, but also that connected me with my Caribbean ancestors where the kind of the natural world and the world of spirits and ancestors is worshipped and is honored in ritual. So it had this lovely way of connecting the two and yet at the same time I'm not a practicing pagan. So, you know, it's sort of, you know, I'm a light touch pagan. And basically, yeah, I'm by no means a serious practicing pagan. It's a light touch paganism. Pagan light.”
2026-03-20 · Intelligence Squared · Why Are Ancient Myths Resurfacing in Modern Britain? With Zakia Sewell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There are lots of things that appeal to me about paganism. You know, I'm kind of interested in spirituality. I like the fact that here is a spiritual path that is all about honoring the kind of the power of nature. That there's no kind of dogma, there's no kind of notion of sin, there is no book that you must follow. It's a very kind of personal practice that connects, that is sort of imagined, it's a very personal practice that draws upon the traditions of the past, at least what we can know about what pre-Christian communities were doing in Britain and elsewhere. But it's also open. It's porous. And I think that always appealed to me. And also the fact that it kind of echoed some of the traditional spiritual practices that I'd seen.”
2026-03-20 · Intelligence Squared · Why Are Ancient Myths Resurfacing in Modern Britain? With Zakia Sewell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To the wheel of the year is a cycle of seasonal celebrations. It's largely a kind of a modern invention sort of 20th century, but it But it has its roots in older Celtic traditions. So it marks the equinoxes, the solstices, and the midpoints in between. And ultimately, it's a kind of attempt to reconnect with the kind of practices of our pre-Christian ancestors who marked, you know, who revered the natural world, who kind of honored the shifts in the year with rituals and customs singing, dancing. There's a lot of folklore attached to each of those moments, but really it's, and so it's a kind of modern phenomenon ultimately, where neo-pagans have tried to sort of resurrect the traditions of the past.”
2026-03-20 · Intelligence Squared · Why Are Ancient Myths Resurfacing in Modern Britain? With Zakia Sewell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That sort of leaves traces all through our culture, but it's sort of beneath the surface. You have to do a little bit of digging in order to reach it.”
2026-03-20 · Intelligence Squared · Why Are Ancient Myths Resurfacing in Modern Britain? With Zakia Sewell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The sisters supposedly live in a kind of feminist utopia learning to hunt the island's wild animals and sort of becoming self-sufficient until they make love with Incubi and give birth to this race of demonic giants. But I think obviously both of these stories are fictional, they're mythological, we're not necessarily meant to read them as truth, but I do find it really interesting that in some of these early stories, you know, we have Britain as this refuge for outsiders, people arriving from Syria in small boats to start life anew. So that just kind of gives you a glimpse of it's a very different type of Britain to this sort of the Britain that we know the Britain that is expressed and sort of conjured in our more dominant national myths and symbols. I see Albion as a kind of alternative spirit of the...”
2026-03-20 · Intelligence Squared · Why Are Ancient Myths Resurfacing in Modern Britain? With Zakia Sewell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of Britain. He talks about Albion as a land inhabited by a race of giants who were kind of demonic and sinful. And the Trojan hero Brutus arrived on the shores of this island and wiped out this race of giants and sort of colonized the country and renamed it Britain after himself. There's also another interesting story about”
2026-03-20 · Intelligence Squared · Why Are Ancient Myths Resurfacing in Modern Britain? With Zakia Sewell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Albion is the ancient name for Britain, so in some of the kind of earliest written records, the ancient Greek geographers describing the island, they refer to it as Albion or Britain, the island formerly known as Albion. And yet it's really difficult to learn much more about it than that. We don't know what the word means. We don't know who the people were that initially spoke it. Perhaps the Greeks made it up. It's kind of shrouded in mystery and I think that idea of this kind of this ancient name, this time before, shrouded in mystery has sort of drawn a lot of people in over the centuries. So there are some early stories and myths associated with Albion, Jeffrey of Monmouth, the 12th century cleric who wrote the history of the kings of Britain, which is one of the first kind of histories. I'll use that word lightly.”
2026-03-20 · Intelligence Squared · Why Are Ancient Myths Resurfacing in Modern Britain? With Zakia Sewell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, the music and pentangle were this sort of the gateway drug, if you like, that kind of got me hooked and I've sort of been an initia and a follower ever since”
2026-03-20 · Intelligence Squared · Why Are Ancient Myths Resurfacing in Modern Britain? With Zakia Sewell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“With jazz and with sort of psychedelia and lots of other influences. So there's something about the music that is very magical and draws upon ancient myth. Something about the music spoke to me. I kind of became obsessed. I kind of downloaded it all as soon as I got home and kept it a secret from my school friends. But it felt like I was communing with this other Britain, this sort of alternative spirit of Britain. And it was the music that kind of kick-started my obsession with British folk culture from bands like Pentangle and people like Charlie Collins and Davy Graham, other kind of people who were part of that folk revival scene of the 1960s, I became interested in these ancient myths about Arthur and Morgan Lefey, etc., finding out more about the tales of the Druids, these kind of ancient priest tribe who you kind of hear kind of snatches of stories about who we know used to populate these isles and later the seasonal customs that I, some of which I attend in the book.”
2026-03-20 · Intelligence Squared · Why Are Ancient Myths Resurfacing in Modern Britain? With Zakia Sewell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My dad had the bright idea of taking me there. I still don't exactly know why. But as I kind of say in the start, music was a big part of my life and always has been, continues to be. And so it makes sense that music was the sort of gateway to this alternative world that I'm exploring in the book. But there was something about Pentangle's music that just utterly captivated me and it seemed to transport me to this alternative Britain that anyone who knows their music will know that it's sort of it was kind of very much of that 1960s flower power, free love, psychedelia kind of moment. And it is sort of both haunting and strange. It kind of uses those old traditional English folk songs that were collected in the century before, but kind of blends them with”
2026-03-20 · Intelligence Squared · Why Are Ancient Myths Resurfacing in Modern Britain? With Zakia Sewell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. I'll begin at the beginning with a quote from William Blake. All things begin and end in Albion's ancient Druid Rocky Shore. I remember the day that the seeds for my quest were sown. It was Sunday twenty ninth of june two thousand eight. I know because I still have the ticket for the gig at home, preserved in a wooden box where my most precious artifacts are stored, its faded brown letters read pentangle, sweet child fortieth anniversary concert. We're a folk band who rose to fame in the late sixties, known for fusing Britain's age old traditional songs with blues, medieval music, in syncopated jazz rhythms. My dad had bought me the ticket as a kind of bonding experience. Things had been difficult at home, and music was a balm for us both.”
2026-03-20 · Intelligence Squared · Why Are Ancient Myths Resurfacing in Modern Britain? With Zakia Sewell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT