Description

Imperial Island shows how empire and its ever-present aftermath have divided and defined Britain over the last seventy years.

‘Masterful … you won’t look at Britain in the same way ever again’ OWEN JONES

After the Second World War, Britain’s overseas empire disintegrated. As white settlers from Rhodesia returned home to a country they barely recognised, Commonwealth citizens from Asia and the Caribbean migrated to a motherland that often refused to recognise them. Race riots erupted in Liverpool and Notting Hill even as communities lived and loved across the colour line. In the 1950s and 60s, imperial violence came home too, pervading the policing of immigrant communities, including their sex lives. In the decade that followed, a surge of support for the far-right inspired an invigorated anti-racist movement.

These tensions, and the imperial mindset that birthed them, have dominated Britain’s relationship with itself and the world ever since: from the simplistic moral equation of Band Aid to the invasion of Iraq, in the tragedy of Stephen Lawrence and the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics, we see how Britain’s contradictory relationship with its past has undermined its self-image as a multicultural nation.

Imperial Island tells a story of immigration and fractured identity, of social strife and communal solidarity, of people on the move and of a people wrestling with their past. It is the story that best explains Britain today.

‘An eye-opening study of the empire within’ SHASHI THAROOR
‘Clear, bold, refreshing’ LUCY WORSLEY

Publisher Review

Incisive, important, and incredibly timely. With a discerning eye for historical detail and a gift for storytelling, Riley traces the arc of empire's post-World War II influence on Britain and the nation's relationship to the world. Imperial Island is an urgent and necessary account for anyone wanting to understand how Britain became the nation it is today -- Caroline Elkins, author of Legacy of Violence In Imperial Island, Charlotte Lydia Riley shows us that Empire's legacy is soaked into Britain's landscapes and built into its cities. From immigrant woes and racial tensions to the way in which imperial mindsets still colour relations among black, white and brown Britons, Empire is inescapably in the country's national DNA. An eye-opening study of the Empire within -- Shashi Tharoor, author of Inglorious Empire Charlotte Lydia Riley radically retells a stale old story in her clear, bold, refreshing voice. Skilfully, inexorably and powerfully, she builds up a picture that's been hiding in plain sight for far too long -- Lucy Worsley, Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces and author of Agatha Christie British history is another conflict zone in the national imagination. We have gone from the purblind, rosily self-indulgent view of the empire ... to more or less its opposite. The way through is a patient, open-minded historicism ... As one of those new historians, Charlotte Lydia Riley, points out in her new book Imperial Island, the British empire reached its greatest territorial extent less than a century ago, in 1929. Today we are essentially going through a reckoning with the 20th century -- Andrew Marr * New Statesman * Imperial Island is a marvellous account of how the empire made modern Britain. With an eye that ranges from popular culture to the highbrow, from high politics to the household, Charlotte Riley's book is a thought-provoking delight that absolutely everyone should read -- Stephen Bush