This book will answer all the important questions about Britain's imperial history. It will explore how Britain's empire once made it the most powerful nation on earth, and how it still affects our lives in many ways today - from the words we use, to the food we eat, the sports we play and even to every grown-up's fixation with a good cup of tea.

Stolen History | BookTrust Stolen History | BookTrust

As Scanlan points out towards the end of this rich and thought-provoking book, 19th-century British capitalists continued to invest heavily in slaveholding enterprises overseas. They funded and insured many of the banks, railroads, steamships, and plantations of the American south. Britain’s cotton industry grew into its largest and most valuable industrial sector by processing much of the raw material produced by America’s slaves. At one point, the livelihood of nearly one in five Britons depended on it. In almost every respect, the free trade empire was less a repudiation than a continuation of the empire of slavery. It’s time to embrace a more honest understanding of its manifold legacies. Sanghera wants Britons to recognise, with him, their ‘deep and complex relationship with the world through empire’, to reclaim intimacy with the multicultural nature of a common history.. . As Sanghera grapples with details of atrocities… what takes hold, to his own surprise as much as ours, is a sense of moral outrage that in turn disrupts the way he sees himself… In the wake of personal epiphany, we glimpse with Sanghera pathways of transformative potential… It’s a simple but profound response – this searching introspection and a quest for new horizons, combined with a readiness to sit with the contradictions of it all ” Very interesting and not your usual boring history book. This one was funny and easy to read. I never knew a lot of this stuff. Empireland is a vital investigation. In the stammering words of a character named Whisky Sisodia in Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses: “The trouble with the Engenglish is that their hiss-hiss-history happened overseas, so they do- do-don’t know what it means.” It’s the perfect epigraph for the book, which stands apart from most volumes on the merits and demerits of the British empire because it is cast as a personal journey of understanding… The result is an extremely readable and well-researched book that seeks to explain, among other things, the country’s sense of exceptionalism when dealing with Brexit and the pandemic; the position of the City of London as one of the world’s major financial centres; the wealth of its richest families and institutions; and the state of its grand country houses and museums.”Empireland is the product of Sanghera’s mission to decolonise himself. It’s a noble, often poignant effort at self-education… a gracefully written book, but its real beauty lies in its complete absence of dogmatism. It’s so refreshing to encounter an author who isn’t bloody certain about everything…. In assessing the empire, Sanghera is… admirably equivocal… Empireland is not an angry diatribe; there’s enough of those already. It’s a sensitive, often uncomfortable commentary on the stubborn influence of empire. Sanghera loves his country but is no longer blind to its faults.”

Sathnam Sanghera and Slave - The Guardian Empireland by Sathnam Sanghera and Slave - The Guardian

On 23 April, a day in which Sant Jordi is celebrated in Catalonia (the day of the book and the rose), I recommended the following book to a person during a conversation: The Four Agreements: A Toltec Wisdom Book by Miguel Ruiz. It is a book that I read more than 15 years ago. It helped me a lot because it made me aware of things that were not working quite well in my life and allowed me to change and my perspective. For me, it was and still is a very powerful book. It is easy to understand, although not easy to apply. The good thing is that it has no age and that it goes directly to its essence with clarity. We know that there are no miracle recipes, but at least for me, trying to put some of these agreements into practice helped me transform things at an individual level. In some way, each of us is seeking our own path, and I believe that it is through the sum of individual changes and shared efforts that we can achieve a more global collective change. Empire State of Mind review – 'Within moments, I am crying on to my laptop' ". the Guardian. 20 November 2021. If you thought an empire was something to do with the Romans and Star Wars you’d be right but the British once had an empire that was the biggest and most powerful in the world. Perhaps you knew that already but how much do you know? Sathnam Sanghera, the journalist and award-winning author of Empireland (Viking), didn’t initially want to write a book for children about the British Empire. “Another publisher approached me and I didn’t want to sanitise the history,” he says. “That’s what Britain has always done, sanitise the history, the violence, and I assumed if you wrote for kids there would be a lot of that.” Brown, Mark (26 November 2013). "Costa book awards 2013: late author on all-female fiction shortlist". The Guardian . Retrieved 27 November 2013.

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But one of the best things was how the book was taken up by teachers and young people, helped by PRH’s donation of 15,000 copies to schools in the UK.“I spoke at The Camden School for Girls and the questions were next level,” he says. “They knew so much. I didn’t really know the British imperial history in Iraq but someone told me that the British had a mandate that caused a lot of problems. With adults it feels like I’m lecturing them, whereas with younger people I’m learning a lot from them.” This book has equipped me with facts about Britain’s past and my family’s past.... Read Full Review But what about the British Empire? Why don’t we learn much about this? And what even is an empire, anyway? Brilliantly written, deeply researched and massively important. It’ll stay in your head for years .” Empire is such a complicated subject. It’s a complicated subject for adults,” he says. He is clearly, to take just one example, no fan of the East India Company but boiling down what it was to one simple explanation just isn’t possible. “It was really racist, but at other times, British people in India were getting married to brown people in India and they had quite liberal attitudes.” Forming opinions