Reviews for EmpireLand: How Imperialism Shaped Modern Britain

“Categorising Sanghera’s book simply as history feels like a massive undersell. It’s also memoir, journalism, commentary on how we live now by examining how we lived then, and a book that achieves the crucial distinction of being important without being inaccessible. As a columnist at The  Times, a memoirist, and a popular tweeter, Sanghera has had plenty of experience of reader blindness over Britain’s non-white citizens, and their populist distaste for America and its racist history, despite the British Empire being “one of the biggest white supremacist enterprises in the history of humanity”. One could only wish that more people read this utterly engaging book, not just to better understand our country’s history, but to finally put to bed that awful question, “Where are you from really?” Rating: 10/10′
The Independent‘s History Book of the Year

“If, in the past, much of the thinking about empire was blinkered and jingoistic, these days it is often lacerating. British imperialism is identified as the source not only of militarism and hooliganism, but of the irresponsibility of high finance and much besides. In contrast to such polemics, Sathnam Sanghera’s new book is nuanced, intelligent and even entertaining. It is also refreshingly honest… As well as chronicling the familiar sins of empire, particularly in India, the author gives a fair hearing to those who emphasise the more positive aspects of imperial rule… [an] excellent book.” 
The Economist

“Brilliantly written, deeply researched and massively important. It’ll stay in your head for years.”
John Oliver, of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

“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.”
Gerard DeGroot, The Times

“A compelling and distressing look at how imperialism has defined modern Britain”
David Harewood

“[An] impassioned and deeply personal journey through Britain’s imperial past and present… Moving effortlessly back and forth between history and journalism, Sanghera connects the racial violence and discrimination of his childhood in 1970s and 80s Wolverhampton with the attitudes and methods previously used to impose empire and white supremacy across the world… Without getting bogged down in definitions, calculations or complicated comparisons, Empireland also manages to convey something of the sheer variety of imperial experiences over four centuries… unflinching…  a moving and stimulating book that deserves to be widely read.”
Fara Dabhoiwala, The Guardian 

“Empireland, [a] scorching polemic on the afterburn of empire.”
Ferdinand Mount, The Financial Times

“In this excellent book, the Times writer Sathnam Sanghera tries to understand why the modern British display such amnesia about their forebears’ vast, world-changing project… He is a good guide to the complexities of this issue, less because of his background — a successful and accomplished commentator, who comes from a Sikh family in Wolverhampton and could speak no English at the age of five — than because of his instincts, which are balanced and largely optimistic…. 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… this is a book anyone really interested in their own identity in modern Britain should read, enjoy and occasionally shout at.”
Andrew Marr, The Sunday Times

“Those who have read Sathnam Sanghera’s wonderful memoir The Boy with the Topknot will not be surprised to find that this latest very well written book combines hugely readable quantities of information about our centuries as an almost inadvertent imperial power with decent, ­balanced and wise judgements. This account of how much of our “island story” was written in other countries deserves to be widely read, not least by those who have migrated to the extremes of present public debate. It is neither woke nor jingoistic; the sentiments are those of a fair-minded British citizen who comes from a Sikh family. His decency and talent remind us of how much we owe to all those immigrants from our empire who came to make their lives here and too often (but happily not always) had to face hostility with a racist hue. The racism was frequently sired by our imperial past.”
Chris Patten, The Tablet

“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 ”
Ashish Ghadiali, The Observer

“Excellent… a desire to rectify ignorance – to shed light on what has been whitewashed from mainstream knowledge – drives this rigorous examination of hidden histories… Empireland skilfully sets out the empire’s staggering scale and scope, including its geography… He delves deep through the centuries… He unflinchingly shows the sheer brutality of empire… Empireland is, most refreshingly, forward-looking, too… powerful.”
Anita Sethi, The Independent

“Empireland is a wide-ranging survey of Empire and its after-effects, where Sanghera examines his subject through a range of potent lenses. From the debate on the restitution of cultural artefacts to attitudes towards immigration, to Brexit exceptionalism, he contends we can only really move on as a nation when we learn to look our past squarely in the face. Clear-sighted, provocative and timely, this is a book to challenge assumptions and ignite a thousand debates – many of them hopefully productive. 8/10.” 
Dan Brotzel, Press Association

“Interrogating the role of Empire in everything from the artefacts in museum collections to the origins of our nation’s multiculturalism and racism, this clear-sighted book also manages to be empathetic and witty – testament to Sanghera’s extraordinary skill in telling this complex story. It should be on every school’s reading list.” 
Harper’s Bazaar

“One of the most brilliant and eye-opening books I’ve ever read.”
Greg James, BBC Radio 1 presenter and author

“EmpireLand could not be more prescient… a good primer on on the history of migration to Britain… nuanced…  incredibly important. Copies should not only be inside every school and public library in the UK, but its contents should be taught.” 
Harry Taylor, The Camden New Journal

“A remarkable look at how British imperialism has shaped the world and the way in which Britain regards itself, Empireland should be a set text in an education system that Sathnam Sanghera says failed him badly. Sanghera has written a deeply personal, moving and often witty reflection on Britain in which he refuses to reduce imperial history to a matter of good or bad. His idea that, deliberately or subconsciously, the British are not honest about the darker elements of the largest empire in history feels important; a lack of reckoning with the past that perpetuates exceptionalism.” 
The Observer

“As Sathnam Sanghera argues in his timely Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain, the collective amnesia over the nation’s often-dark colonial past underpins the jingoism that helped spawned policy disasters from Suez to Brexit. With luck, the book can be part of the solution… meticulously sourced…  powerful… Sanghera’s uncompromising assessment will certainly face disapproval, especially from those who regard criticism of empire as somehow unpatriotic. But a long, hard look at such a formative period is way overdue. The twin traumas of Brexit, with its related fantasy of reviving colonial links to replace trade with the EU, and the coronavirus pandemic, with its outsize impact on non-white Britons, are two pressing reasons to clamber onto the psychiatrist’s couch. Empireland provides another.”
Ed Cropley, Reuters BreakingViews

“The legacy of Europe’s empires is so bound into our society that trying to remove their influence upon us is as futile a task as attempting to remove the egg from a baked cake, to borrow an analogy that the author and Times writer Sathnam Sanghera uses in Empireland. As he superbly chronicles, the legacy of the British empire is everywhere you look. Perhaps most fittingly of all, the word “loot” is itself appropriated from the Hindi word “lut”: the spoils of war. Although Empireland is the product of wide reading rather than original research, it is a fantastic introduction for anyone who wants to learn more about the British empire. Sanghera shares his knowledge without pretension or affectation. He also has a peerless eye for a killer fact and a great story.” 
Stephen Bush, The New Statesman

“There is something to be said for authors who approach the topic [of empire] in the spirit of engaged curiosity rather than didactic declamation… Sanghera is a deft synthesist who sifts through mounds of historical treatises and alights on visceral, often shocking details… The British Empire was vast, bureaucratic and longlasting – so much so that it can feel abstract, hard to fully grasp. But Sanghera has a talent for tangibility… At the same time, he never talks down to his readers, discussing both the slipperiness of his subject (“historians agree that empire was both unplanned and a nebulous construct”) and highlighting key historiographical debates.”
Sukhdev Sandhu, The Times Literary Supplement

“Even if you think you know this country’s history well, Empireland is a stunning and thought-provoking read. Sathnam Sanghera’s new bestseller resists the temptation to take anachronistic shots at the brutality and greed of Britain’s imperial history or to puff its achievements. Instead he does something much harder and more interesting. He highlights the empire’s hidden influence, positive and negative, on modern Britain: our politics, culture, education, ethnic make-up, language. Indeed our whole sense of place and being. The empire was one of the biggest things in world history, he writes. It has shaped the lives of billions of people. The least we can do is to think about it.”
Edward Lucas, The Times

“This remarkable book shines the brightest of lights into some of the darkest and most misunderstood corners of our shared history. As urgent as it is illuminating, Sanghera drives a coach and horses through the ludicrous but increasingly popular notion that wanting a proper public understanding of all aspects of British and Imperial history is somehow unpatriotic or ‘anti-British’.” 
James O’Brien

“This is the book I had long thought of writing. Sanghera has produced a terrific sweep through the legacy of empire and it should be required reading on every school history course. He achieves a good balance between ensuring the reader learns a lot and yet doesn’t get overwhelmed by the scale of the subject. This is the quick, deep dive.” 
Madeleine Bunting, in her selection of Top 10 books about the aftermath of empire, for The Guardian

Empireland is an utterly fascinating journey...  For many British Asians who feel a strong connection to their heritage, Empireland exposes things you will wish you had learnt at school. What is particularly extraordinary about the book is how densely packed it is with thorough research and quotes… This thoroughly engaging and incredibly important book must be read by everyone…. enlightening and transformative. This remarkable work should be included in school curricula… [it] will undoubtedly continue to improve the understanding of future generations and perhaps even shape them.”
Eastern Eye

“The subject is timely. With statues being tossed in rivers and the National Trust accused of going woke, it feels as if the Right regards the past as the repository of civilisation and the Left sees it as a closet packed with skeletons of dead racists, but the reality of the British Empire, says Sathnam Sanghera, was infinitely more complex…. The cultural treasures looted by Britain, now sitting in our museums, were recognised by contemporaries for what they were: booty….  I am sold on the larger part of Sanghera’s thesis, that the empire could be rotten and we don’t know enough about it…. a lot of what Sanghera documents is news to me… Sanghera’s point, I guess, is that we are unconscious citizens of Empireland: empire made us, whether we realise it or not. He might be correct… The history is on Sanghera’s side. The facts speak for themselves. ” 
Tim Stanley, The Daily Telegraph

“Sathnam Sanghera’s new book should be mandatory reading in schools across Britain… The British author objectively addresses the lasting influence of imperialism… an urgent and remarkable book… levity is found throughout Empireland… And yet the breezy, sometimes baffled tone never belittles what Sanghera calls the “wilfully white supremacist and occasionally genocidal” aspect of Britain’s imperial past… There is a brilliant chapter about “selective amnesia”… It’s a deeply personal – moving, even – reflection of the country he lives in, which could start as many conversations about the continued corrupting influence of the British Empire.”
Ben East, The National

“Marvellous… terrific and very important.” 
Simon Schama

“Empireland by Sathnam Sanghera (Viking) is a salutary reminder of the dark side of our past. I spend my time trying to help resolve armed conflicts from Myanmar to Nigeria that are largely caused by the crass errors of our ancestors. It helps to understand how those came about.”
Jonathan Powell, The New Statesman 

“May I humbly commend #EmpireLand by @Sathnam?“
Hugh Laurie

“Couldn’t be more timely, or eloquent, or needed.”
Meera Syal

“A wonderful, wonderful book.”
David Lammy

“Sathnam Sanghera presents penetrating glimpses of the rarely perceived obvious about Britain’s history & modern multicultural reality. As uncomfortable as it is enlightening. And a lot for Australians to reflect on too.”
Malcolm Turnbull, 29th Prime Minister of Australia – 2015 -2018

“Lucid but never simplistic; entertaining but never frivolous; intensely readable while always mindful of nuance and complexity – Empireland takes a perfectly-judged approach to its contentious but necessary subject.” 
Jonathan Coe

“In this witty and multi-faceted portrait of our nation, the award-winning journalist and novelist looks with great acuity at how the Empire wrought contemporary Britain; from the attitudes of our politicians and our response to Covid-19, to the words we use daily without appreciating their colonial origin. How is it, he asks, that despite the ubiquitous evidence of imperialism in our lives, we still so often refuse to acknowledge it, let alone teach it in schools?”
Caroline Sanderson, The Bookseller

“Sathnam Sanghera’s nuanced, witty and evidence-driven book explains how we arrived where we are as a country. It celebrates our triumphs and interrogates our faults. A useful antidote to those pushing culture wars, Empireland should be read with an open mind by all of us educated in this country – as we have only really ever had a limited perspective of what it means to be British and the impact of the British Empire. I only wish this book has been around when I was at school.”
Sadiq Khan