He unflinchingly shows the sheer brutality of empire, in atrocities such as the invasion of Tibet in 1903 in which thousands were massacred. He delves deep through the centuries, from “the first British empire”, which ran from the 17 th century to the 1780s and was founded on the development of sugar plantations in the West Indies, to the “second British empire” which was “a more concerted power grab of India and Africa, at first dominated by the East India Company”.

He skilfully sets out the staggering scale and scope of empire including its geography (“Did you know that when the British empire was at its territorial peak in the early 1920s, it covered 13.71 million square miles, which represents 24 per cent of the earth’s land area or equivalent to 94 per cent of the moon’s surface area or almost exactly twice the surface of Pluto?” he asks). So, he sets out to immerse himself in making up for it ( Empireland has the longest bibliography I’ve ever seen in a book), devouring books and articles about the topic, including Jan Morris’s Pax Britannica: The Climax of an Empire, William Dalrymple’s The Anarchy and Kehinde Andrews, whose new book The New Age of Empire is also published this month. Sanghera shows how the empire has hitherto been a footnote in history, in a book itself filled with fascinating footnotes. In fact, he adds, “looking back, it’s almost as if teachers went out of their way to avoid telling us about it”. Meanwhile, my education in British empire was almost non-existent”, writes Sanghera. “I have a GCSE in history under my belt, but it left me with little more than superficial knowledge of the world wars, the Tudors and the Tollund Man. A desire to rectify such ignorance – to shed light on what has been whitewashed from mainstream knowledge – drives this rigorous examination of hidden histories.

In the epigraph to the excellent Empireland, Sathnam Sanghera quotes Whisky Sisodia from Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses: “The trouble with the Engenglish is that their hiss hiss history happened overseas, so they dodo don’t know what it means”.

Empire sathnam sanghera