We asked people from any background to send us their true personal accounts of immigration to Britain.

The response was significant, and the range of entries overwhelming. Six judges - including Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty and the novelist Kate Mosse - selected the best, most illuminating and most powerful entries to be published in this book.

The result is the widest-reaching contemporary survey of the immigrant experience published in many years. In these pages you'll discover sixteen very different voices, each one presenting a very different point of view.

In taking us around the world, each account shows a new side to the most complicated journey of all,
Finding a place to call home.

''The country's ethnic and religious make-up is already making a vivid mark on our literature. I am proud and delighted to be its patron'' David Lammy MP