THE SOCIAL HISTORIAN Dominic Sandbrook could recently be found in the Culture section of the Sunday Times reviewing a book called Imperial Island: A History of Empire in Modern Britain by Charlotte Lydia Riley. Sandbrook, who knows his onions, didn’t seem to think a great deal of Dr Riley’s opus, but his principal complaint was reserved for its deep-dyed censoriousness.
The author, he declared, “has a remarkable enthusiasm for telling people off”. The luckless victims of her asperity included Pathé newsreels for celebrating “white athletes and swimmers
