Published in 2023
11 hrs and 31 mins
Charlotte Lydia Riley is a historian of twentieth-century Britain at the University of Southampton, specialising in questions about empire, politics, culture and identity. Her writing has appeared in a wide range of publications including the Guardian, New Statesman, Prospect and History Today. She also co-hosts the podcast Tomorrow Never Knows in which she and Emma Lundin discuss feminism, pop culture, politics and history.
What is this book about?
This riveting new history tells the story of Britain’s journey from imperial power to a nation divided.
After the Second World War, Britain’s overseas empire disintegrated. But over the next seventy years, empire came to define Britain and its people as never before.
From immigration and race riots to the Suez Crisis and the Falklands War, from the simplistic moral equation of Band Aid to the invasion of Iraq, the imperial mindset has dominated Britain’s relationship with itself and the world. In the tragedy of Stephen Lawrence, in Britain’s response to radical Islam, even in the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics, we see how this contradictory relationship has undermined its self-image as a multicultural nation, helping explain the Windrush deportations and Brexit.
Drawing on a mass of new research, from personal letters to pop culture, 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.
