Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain

by Sathnam Sanghera

Surely left-hand?

Barczewski concludes that the British belief that true heroism requires disaster is so entrenched in our psyche that we sometimes even reimagine parts of our history as disasters when they were not, such as the retreat at Dunkirk, and it’s easy to think of other examples of heroic failure being fetishized.

As the former British Museum Director Neil MacGregor once put it: ‘What is very remarkable about German history as a whole is that the Germans use their history to think about the future, where the British tend to use their history to comfort themselves.’ But why are we like this? Why do we struggle to look our history in the eye? When other countries with difficult histories, such as Germany, do not? Having spent nearly two years thinking about it, a number of explanations have transpired, not least the fact that we have not, as a nation, been invaded or occupied in modern times. As a result we have never been forced to interrogate our behaviour, in the way that the Germans, the Japanese and the French were forced to do after the Second World War.

threatening to cancel their membership of an organization that highlights history for the crime of highlighting actual history.

and if I have, as a result of going from no knowledge to a little knowledge over the course of about two years, earned the right to proffer a single piece of advice to campaigners, it would be to be positive.