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He acknowledges that a laissez-faire approach to integration has sometimes allowed immigrant communities to “become isolated and myopic”. Mr Sanghera, a writer for the Times, justifiably criticises Britons for not being more receptive to immigrants, but he is no reflexive admirer of “pure multiculturalism”. The empire is laid bare in all its contradictory complexity.

And just as Britain has an imperial past, he recognises that it also has a liberal, anti-imperialist history-of abolishing the slave trade and spreading democracy, albeit in limited form. “Empireland” is the result.Īs well as chronicling the familiar sins of empire, particularly in India, the author gives a fair hearing to those who emphasise the more positive aspects of imperial rule, railways, courts and all.

But as wrangles about Brexit and racism swirled around him, he resolved to read up. He learned nothing about the British Empire at school, he writes. The son of Punjabi immigrants, Mr Sanghera was born in the mid-1970s in Wolverhampton, an industrial town in the West Midlands and a focal point of anti-immigrant politics.