Saul David
Hearts of Darkness
Empires in the Sun: The Struggle for the Mastery of Africa – 1830–1990
By Lawrence James
Weidenfeld & Nicolson 391pp £30 order from our bookshop
In the wake of the failed student campaign to remove the statue of the controversial empire-builder Cecil Rhodes from Oriel College, Oxford, a book on the colonisation of Africa could not be better timed. It is surely more important to try to understand why men like Rhodes behaved in the way they did, for good or ill, than to simply erase them from history. ‘Debates over whether imperial rule was a blessing or a curse,’ comments Lawrence James, ‘invariably end up by telling us what we already know. Good men can do bad things and bad men can do good things, and propensities towards virtue and vice are fairly evenly distributed in all races.’
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'The identification of a mighty force sparkling intermittently seems to me to constitute the finest and most consistent poetic achievement of Goudie’s book.'
Candia McWilliam on @lachlangoudie's 'The Story of Scottish Art'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/all-that-glisters
Though 'the hotel had a reputation as the area’s best, its staff were not used to looking after world leaders, so the arrival of Cuba’s new strongman, Fidel Castro, came as something of a shock.'
@dcsandbrook on @simonhallwriter's 'Ten Days in Harlem'.
http://ow.ly/I63850Bvs10
'After all, who knows what anybody is really like, or what they really think? The biographer – same as a painter of portraits – cannot help but reproduce himself to some degree.'
From the archive: Beryl Bainbridge talks to Sebastian Shakespeare.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/sebastian-shakespeare-talks-to-beryl-bainbridge