Lawrence James
When The World Was Red
The Empire Project: The Rise and Fall of the British World-System 1830–1970
By John Darwin
Cambridge University Press 800pp £25 order from our bookshop
Understanding the British Empire
By Ronald Hyam
Cambridge University Press 552pp £65 hbk £24.99 pbk order from our bookshop
The British Empire will not go away. A flood of television documentaries continues to chart its overall history, or focus on its myriad human stories, preferably scandalous or violent or both. Imperial history has become a literary growth industry and there is a vogue for fiction about the Empire, often written by men and women who grew up in the hybrid cultures it fostered. From time to time, there are also spasms of national breast-beating. Rows over whether or not the Empire was a good thing still erupt in the press and help keep alive our consciousness of its part in the history of our country and the rest of the world.
The authors reviewed here stand wisely aside from such contention; they are eminent academics who sustain a clear-headed detachment from the emotions generated by this subject and avoid the pitfalls of projecting contemporary morality and values back into the past.
Professor John Darwin concentrates on the period
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'"The Last Colony" is, among other things, part of the campaign to shift the British position through political pressure. As with all good propaganda, Sands’s case is based in truth, if not the whole of it.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/empire-strikes-back
'To her enemies she was the alien temptress who led Charles I away from the "true religion" of Protestantism and towards royal absolutism.'
Lucy Hughes-Hallett reviews @LeandadeLisle's 'colourful', 'persuasive' new biography of Henrietta Maria.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/royalist-generalissima
'Empathy is our moral portal gun, and it jams from underuse.'
Don Paterson on Portal 2, catching Covid on the Eurostar, and rereading Ian Hamilton’s 'Against Oblivion'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/portal-agony