The perspective for this review is that of a general psychiatrist who is convinced of the clinical relevance of sociocultural psychiatry for a full, multimodel understanding of mental illness, and is aware of the intellectual stimulus which occurs when the clinical and research vistas extend from one cultural unit to another (i.e. transcultural psychiatry). My specific purpose therefore is to name some books which can help establish ‘good practice’ in multicultural Britain and are useful reference texts for teaching, as well as research. The choice of books inevitably reflects my own clinical and academic interests, and the volumes received from the review editor of this Journal over recent years. Any particularly disenfranchised reader will nevertheless find sufficient reference to other aspects of this fascinating field which has now become central to much present day clinical practice; transcultural psychiatry has been regarded as having ‘come of age’ and yet paradoxically also as beginning ‘at home’. Evidence in support of these developmental aphorisms can be culled from the publication of at least 20 books on cultural psychiatry in the last two decades, as well as from the final reports of the World Health Organization epidemiological studies which may have reassured the dubious that the major psychoses, such as schizophrenia and manic-depression, and even the neuroses are universally recognised, even if their presentation and ‘explanatory models' differ radically between some cultures, although are similar in others.