In the Nottingham streets where the serial is set, the struggle now is to control the narrative of a fiercely contested history
There isn’t really a high street in Annesley Woodhouse. The old Methodist chapel is shuttered. The miners’ welfare club, where everyone used to have their birthday parties and wedding receptions, has been demolished and built over. The closest Forest Road has toa community hub is Ian White’s grocery store, where locals from the adjacent former mining terraces and the smarter new housing estates get their basics.
In the past week, it is clear, there has only been one topic of conversation at the till there: James Graham’s unmissable BBC series Sherwood, which dramatises the village’s history over the past four decades. Graham, who grew up nearby, had a Saturday job at Ian White’s; his mother worked there, too. On Thursday morning, one former colleague, Dawn – reluctant to have her full name in the London papers – was unpacking boxes outside.
