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INTRODUCTION BY BONNIE GREER. The Contribution of Immigrants to Britain. The American playwright and cultural commentator questions how indigenous anyone or thing is to the British Isles – and celebrates the achievement of individuals from elsewhere and improved the UK and the world
ADE ADEPITAN • Athlete and TV presenter. Born in Lagos, Nigeria, at 15 months old, Ade contracted polio which left him unable to walk. Aged three, his family moved to London. He represented Great Britain in basketball at the Olympics before presenting The World's Busiest Cities and other TV shows
ALAN YAU • Restaurateur. Alan Yau was born Yau Tak Wai in Hong Kong in 1962 and moved to join his family in Norfolk aged 12. He learnt how to run a food business while helping out his parents at their Chinese restaurant in Wisbech. He founded Thai chain Busaba Eathai and Hakkasan Chinese restaurant
ALEC ISSIGONIS • Car designer. His Greek family fled the Greco-Turkish War in 1922. His most famous creation is the Mini, which became known as the quintessentially British car due to its practicality and popularity with the working class. He worked on Morris Minor, Austin 1100 and Austin Maxi
ALEK WEK • Model. After leaving Sudan, she went into fashion and starred in music videos for artists including Tina Turner and Janet Jackson and became recognised globally. Her success blazed a trail for dark-skinned women at a time when the industry was dominated by white faces
ALF DUBS • Politician. Alf Dubs was born in Prague in 1932. His father was Jewish and the family fled Czechoslovakia when Germany invaded in 1938. He escaped to Britain on the Kindertransport. He became director of the Refugee Council, a Labour life peer and immigration campaigner
ANDRAS SCHIFF • Pianist and conductor. András Schiff was born in Budapest, Hungary, to a Jewish family, the only child of two Holocaust survivors. His interpretations of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven and Schubert have earned him a worldwide following and his discography is renowned for its excellence
ANISH KAPOOR • Sculptor. Born in India, he has designed several architecturally scaled public artworks; notably Cloud Gate in Chicago's Millennium Park, Sky Mirror in Nottingham, Temenos in Middlesbrough, and Ark Nova, an inflatable concert hall created in the wake of the tsunami in Japan in 2011
ANNA FREUD • Psychoanalyst. When the Nazis occupied Austria, she moved to England with the rest of her family, aged 43. She continued her work in London, but whereas her father Sigmund Freud's work centred on the analysis of adults, she worked with children, with her friend Dorothy Burlingham
ARTHUR WHARTON • Footballer. He became the first black footballer in the English football league and the world's first black professional football player when he kept goal for Darlington FC, then Preston North End in the 1880s. Statues of him stand at FIFA HQ in Zurich and FA HQ in the UK
BARBARA COOPER • RAF officer. Born in Canada, in 2008 Barbara made history when she was made an Air Commodore, becoming the highest-ranked female RAF officer. In 2010, she was put in charge of the Air Cadet Organisation, responsible for training 45,000 teenagers and 15,000 adult volunteers
BERNARD KATZ • Physician. He left Germany as a young man to escape the Nazis. His research helped scientists to understand the way nerves and muscles work. He received a Nobel Prize in 1970 for his work on neurotransmitters – the body's chemical messangers.
BUSHRA NASIR • Headteacher. When she arrived from Pakistan aged eight, Bushra could not speak a word of English. In 23 years as headteacher of Plashet girls school in east London, she worked with staff and pupils to transform it from an underachieving school to one rated outstanding by Ofsted
CARLOS ACOSTA • Ballet dancer. Carlos Acosta's family lived in deprivation in Havana, Cuba, when he was born in 1973, the youngest of 11 siblings.

Louis Stewart works for an educational company marketing books to schools. He started tweeting stories of inspirational immigrants after listening to a podcast about Brexit. He was taken aback by the warm response these brief biographies received; many people wanted to make them better known. He studied sociology at the University of Sussex. He lives in Brighton. 
Naomi Kenyon studied Sociology at university and has since worked primarily within women's healthcare in the fields of obstetrics and gynaecology. She has worked both for the NHS and as a researcher for the University of Oxford. She co-wrote and illustrated the book. 
Bonnie Greer is an American-British playwright, novelist, critic and broadcaster. Born in Chicago, she has lived in the UK since 1986. She is a columnist for the New European, a regular commentator on TV and radio, and Chancellor of the University of Kingston.