Here we are in 2022 navigating cancel culture, Brexit, identity politics, war in Europe.

How did we get here? Did we miss something? Robert Carlyle, who played the wildcard Begbie in the '90s hit Trainspotting, is here to show us that we did. That the world we live in was shaped by the forgotten decade: the 1990s.

From Hong Kong to Moscow, Cool Britannia to No Frills flights, we travel back in time to key moments in the '90s that reverberate today in unexpected ways.

Episode 8: Race Relations

As Robert Carlyle discovers, for some people in the 90s, Britannia wasn’t so cool. Racially motivated attacks increased, the British National Party won its first ever election, and the enquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence concluded that the Metropolitan Police was institutionally racist, something that many Londoners already knew. Professor Jason Arday and Dr Halima Begum explain why the 90s was also the decade when the term Islamophobia was coined, and for a very good reason.


Producer: Stephen Hughes
Sound Designer/Composer: Phil Channell
Actors: Tayla Kovacevic-Ebong, Debbie Korley, Ronny Jhutti
Consultant: Professor Jason Arday