This concise, but invaluable, book provides insights into nineteenth-century views of empire which now animate twenty-first century culture wars, from Edward Colston's toppled statue to the Common Sense Group of Conservative MPs and Peers.
Corrine Fowler, author and Professor of Postcolonial Literature at the University of Leicester.
Deny & Disavow is an essential guide. Written by a man with three decades of experience of researching imperial history, and combining elements of memoir with travelogue, it is incredibly accessible, totally authoritative, and intensely readable. This country would be infinitely more sane if it were compulsory reading.
Sathnam Sanghera, award-winning author, columnist and feature writer for The Times.
Alan Lester's Deny & Disavow is a timely guidebook to the culture wars surrounding Britain's contested past, and an anatomy of the dishonesties and evasions that underpin contemporary projects of rehabilitating empire. With all the care and precision of decades spent in the study of British imperial history, Lester addresses the ways in which that history has been used to advance the politics of racism and ethnonationalism, and to attack the 'enemies within' of racial minorities and intellectuals. With wit and gentle exasperation, Lester shows how to counter the arguments of imperial nostalgism, and insist on the real complexity of history: a complexity that is always ethically challenging, always difficult, and always resistant to the comforts of triumphalism.
Peter Mitchell, writer and historian, author of Imperial Nostalgia: How the British Conquered Themselves
A hugely informative and highly readable takedown of the self-serving canards spread by Britain's culture warriors on the question of empire. Lester takes us on a figurative stroll through Britain's imperial history, past statues and stately homes, explaining why a challenging historical engagement is better than either shame or myths of glory.
Priyamvada Gopal, author of Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent. and Professor of Postcolonial Studies in the Faculty of English at Cambridge University.
