Testing the Echo

'Helpful advice to foreigners visiting Britain: 'When first entering a tube train, be sure to shake hands with every passenger. And do not fail to test the famous echo in the Reading Room of the British Museum.' Emma is a dedicated ESOL teacher (English for Speakers of Other Languages) whose class includes people from Somalia, Serbia, The Congo, India and Egypt. She also has to coach them to pass the new Test of UK Citizenship. As the Foreign Office worries away at whether the questions in the Test are the right ones, and Emma's friends and pupils challenge its underlying attitudes, Emma finds her commitment drowning in the conflicting currents of ethnicity, religion and political correctness. "Testing the Echo" is a provocative and often satirical look at the overwhelming difficulty of defining what it is to be British.