’Ten Pound Poms’: A Life History of British Postwar Emigration to Australia

A riveting history of the ’Ten Pound Poms’, a wave of British citizens who migrated to Australia and New Zealand after the Second World War.

Between the 1940s and 1970s, more than a million Britons migrated to Australia. They were the famous ’Ten Pound Poms’ and this is their story.

The authors draw on a vast trove of letters, diaries and personal photographs, as well as hundreds of interviews with former migrants, to offer original insights into key historical themes. They explore people’s motivations for emigrating, gender relations and family dynamics, the clashing experience of the ’very familiar and awfully strange’, homesickness and the personal and national identities of both settlers and returnees.

Filled with fascinating testimonies that shed light on migrant life histories, ’Ten Pound Poms’ will engage readers interested in British and Australian migration history and intrigued about the power of migrant memories for individuals, families and nations.

James Hammerton is an Emeritus Scholar at La Trobe University
Alistair Thomson is a Professor of History at Monash University