Imperial Island

Imperial Island is a marvellous account of how the empire made modern Britain. With an eye that ranges from popular culture to the highbrow, from high politics to the household, Charlotte Riley's book is a thought-provoking delight that absolutely everyone should read

STEPHEN BUSH, columnist for the Financial Times

Charlotte Lydia Riley radically retells a stale old story in her clear, bold, refreshing voice. Skilfully, inexorably and powerfully, she builds up a picture that's been hiding in plain sight for far too long

LUCY WORSLEY, Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces and author of Agatha Christie

Incisive, important, and incredibly timely. An urgent and necessary account for anyone wanting to understand how Britain became the nation it is today

CAROLINE ELKINS, author of Legacy of Violence

Riley’s book … examin[es], with considerable skill, Britain’s postwar retreat from empire … [and] recounts, with particular sympathy, the experiences faced by immigrants from the former empire

Telegraph

At a time when discussion of the subject [of empire] can quickly devolve into ill-informed polemic, this offers an extensively researched, thought-provoking alternative

History Revealed

An immaculately detailed and impeccably researched account of what shaped Britain as we know it, following the collapse of empire. This is an urgent book and fine example of why the past, and knowledge of the past, is so important in the present

HELEN CARR, author of The Red Prince

Riley shows that attitudes to empire in Britain were always complex and contested … provides some important corrections … [and] charts how, in the wake of decolonisation, imperialism continued to shape life in Britain … if the history of empire in Britain that Imperial Island tells is a very modern one, Riley shows, too, that our “history wars” have a long history of their own

Hannah Rose Woods, New Statesman

A masterful, ingeniously written telling of Britain's real history, stripped of its sugarcoating. Read this incisive and forensic book, and you won't look at Britain in the same way ever again

OWEN JONES

A withering indictment of cruel Britannia … a chilling history of institutional and public prejudice … Riley gives injustices that ought to be better known their due

Guardian