EMPIREWORLD HOW BRITISH IMPERIALISM HAS SHAPED THE GLOBE
SATHNAM SANGHERA
Viking, 464pp, £20
In this follow-up to his 2021 bestseller Empireland, wrote Andrew Marr in the Times, Sanghera ‘tries to understand why the modern British display such amnesia about their forebears’ vast, world-changing project.’ Although the book is ‘based on secondary sources, most readers will learn a lot, from the imperial origin of moustaches to the shameful invasion of Tibet, and Queen Elizabeth I complaining in 1596 about England being swamped by black immigration… Repeatedly the book emphasises that in virtually every period of imperial expansion, alongside the enthusiasts, there were just as many opponents in Britain.’
It helps too that ‘Sanghera has a good newspaper writer's eye for a vivid sentence.’
For Arjun Neil Alim, writing in the Evening Standard, ‘the story of how so many artefacts found their way into Britain's museums… is entertaining and relevant. But more interesting is the analysis of our national psyche. The experience of running the world's largest empire, according to Sanghera, made the British more multicultural, internationalist and wealthier.’
Vigorous dissent was offered by Pratinav Anil on englesbergideas. com. Calling it ‘a dispiritingly bad book’, Anil pointed out that Sanghera ‘isn't encumbered by facts. That's just how he rolls, proceeding sans substantiation from one sweeping condemnation to the next. The effect is that of being cornered in a pub by a conspiracy theorist convinced that he alone can give you the “real” truth, not the brainwashing sort of thing they teach you at university…it's more of a breezy memoir than an argumentative essay. It is also as tedious as it is tendentious.’
TEDDY BOYS POST-WAR BRITAIN AND THE FIRST YOUTH REVOLUTION
MAX DÉCHARNÉ
Profile Books, 336pp, £25
A mainly British youth subculture of the early 1950s and 1960s, Teddy Boys were so called for their mock Edwardian fashions – tight narrow trousers, pointed shoes, long sideburns (a newspaper headline had shortened Edwardian to Teddy and the name caught on).
‘This sub-class of, ‘was associated…with all manner of social evil. Even in the following decade, my sheltered suburban childhood was haunted by dark rumours about them, creatures perceived to be the embodiment of juvenile delinquency and the decline in the nation's moral fibre.’
