Paul Gilroy is regarded by many as the undisputed (black) intellectual heavyweight champion of the world. And rightly so: there are few finer books on ‘race’ and the modern experience of blackness in Britain and the US than his 1993 classic, The Black Atlantic.

His latest offering - a photographic history of postwar black settlement in Britain, was launched this week with a series of talks and openings, including a special event at Rivington Place, the impressive newly built East London home of InIVA (the Institute of International Visual Arts) and Autograph ABP (Association of Black Photographers). Though published by Saqi, the book is closely associated with the activities of InIVA through its Chair, legendary academic and intellectual, Stuart Hall, who has written the preface.

Black Britain represents a curious turn for the Gilroy, who, unusually for a scholar of culture, adopts a very conventional narrative about the past centred on the nation. The book has little to do with black (or any other) art as such, despite its glossy, coffee table format and its association with InIVA. It is a no-frills, descriptive documentary account of a story that is in many ways familiar, told with black and white press photos from the Getty Image archive (taken, in all likelihood, by white photographers, who remain anonymous).

Its real achievement lies in compiling a great many rare images of considerable interest to scholars, educators and general readers seeking to enrich their understanding of black history in the UK and London in particular, where most of its drama has unfolded.

Settlement is chronologically depicted, beginning with Pre-Windrush portraits of black soldiers and elite visitors from Africa, America and the Caribbean, followed by gritty scenes of life in the 1950s that capture the poverty and discrimination which set in once mass migration from the Caribbean gathered pace.

Themes of social unrest and conflict in Notting Hill and Brixton are tempered by a triumphant set of portraits including the capital’s first black policeman and traffic wardens, along with the first black resident of Brixton.

The range of protagonists is vast, cross-cutting genders, occupations and social classes: prominent black figures, entertainers, cricketers, athletes, intellectuals and artists as diverse as Martin Luther King, Bob Marley and Daley Thompson feature alongside hundreds of anonymous lay people, all contextualised with relevant images of Asians and white people – above all those relating to the mobilisation of political racism and anti-racism in the 1970s and 1980s.

Gilroy’s prose, which effectively frames the photographs, is lucid and jargon-free, aimed at a broad audience, but typically sophisticated in its historical portrait of the social, economic and political developments and processes surrounding immigration.

Frustratingly, however, he often neglects the aesthetic value of the photos, using them as visual aids to flesh out and illustrate his narrative, rather than treating them as texts of interest in their own right. Some of their poignancy is lost by the crowded, jumbled assemblage of images as a litany, classified by little other than the blackness of the bodies that appear in them, and the year in which they were published.

He could have gone further, perhaps, in imposing themes upon the images, which cry out for more visually attentive arrangement and interpretive written analysis than can be afforded them individually in a volume that seeks to cover more ground than it is comfortably able.

By rushing through the 1990s to the present, the book underplays internal divisions and stratifications within Britain’s many black communities that have taken root in the last two decades, burying its head in the sand to virtually all the pressing issues which face Black Britain today.

Puzzlingly, for a scholar of his political astuteness and expertise in internationalism, Gilroy thus leaves himself open to charges of marginalising the African presence in Britain, and underestimating the importance of the transatlantic world, both of which have expanded considerably during the latest phase of globalisation.

As a documentary picture book of early postwar black settlement, Black Britain is not, therefore, in all respects, a timely offering. Still, in drawing attention to unused raw visual material on Britain’s black history, it more than fulfils its stated objectives.

Paul Gilroy will be at the South Bank Centre on Wednesday November 7 2007 to give an illustrated talk covering the everyday experiences and anonymous faces, alongside the iconic images of Black British history. See the Southbank Centre Website for more details.