The Truth About Empire: Real Histories of British Colonialism, edited by Alan Lester, London, C. Hurst & Co., 2024, 400 pp., £25 (hbk), ISBN: 978-1- 911723-09-7

One wonders what all the fuss is about, really … 

Alan Lester’s collaboration with Sathnam Sanghera and 14 other scholars, to produce a volume of such diversity and lucidity should certainly be hailed as the landmark it is. Within, readers will find concise treatments of a number of key issues in the history and historiography of British imperialism – including a standout from the late Professor Emerita Lyndall Ryan (1943–2024) on the Tasmanian genocide (pp. 55–72), and quite the most fascinating insight, from Liam Liburd, into black political thinkers’ comparison of fascism and imperialism in the 1930s (pp. 213–233). University and higher-school teachers will be spoiled for choice as to which of these – and which of the other ten chapters, plus Introduction from Lester (pp. 11–46) and Foreword by Sanghera (pp. 3–9) – they will wish to set for students’ reading.

Attractive and well-designed by Hurst & Co., the book will sit nicely next to all the other essential texts that are required reading for the scholar of the British Empire: Porter, MacKenzie, the Oxford and the Cambridge histories, Auerbach on imperial boredom, Elkins on violence, and more besides. Being a hardcover, it won’t deteriorate from over-use like the well-thumbed and more-than-sightly-foxed paperbacks we’re all used to. Buying it as an eBook will enable even more use, and avoid the need to choose which chapter to scan and stick in the university repository.