As 2020 is coming to an end, you can either read a dozen Quilette articles or letters in The Times - or even throw in a PragerU video for good measure - insisting the British Empire was 'Overwhelmingly a force for good' and that 'wokery' is erasing history...

Or you can avail yourself of the critical and deeply researched work of actual scholars. Here are my recommendations for Christmas gifts this year - for anyone seriously interested in the history of the British Empire and its legacies:

@PriyaSatia 'Time's Monster'
-@profdanhicks 'The Brutish Museum'
-@PriyamvadaGopal 'Insurgent Empire'
-@DalrympleWill 'The Anarchy'
-Stuart Ward and @astrid_rasch 'Embers of Empire in Brexit Britain'
-@RobertGildea 'Empires of the Mind'
-@aaprocter
And some forthcoming ones:

@Sathnam 'Empireland'
and of course @pdkmitchell 'Imperial Nostalgia'
Apologies if I have forgotten any others - there is obviously a vast literature out there, so these are just some initial recommendations and a good starting-point if you are interested - genuinely interested - in the British Empire...
So I did forget a few:

@mbarcia24 'The Yellow Demon of Fever'
-@lottelydia 'The Free Speech Wars'
And, as some people have kindly pointed out, I should perhaps include some of my own books, if nothing else than to please my publishers...
Honourable mentions:

@jonewilson 'India Conquered'
And I'm going beyond the Anglo-centric focus of the list to include this brilliant historical comic which cannot be recommended enough:

@MichaelGVann 'The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt'
And taking us into global comparative imperialism:

@olaferr

More from Book

Another thread on Whittle as a companion to this thread.


Here Stephen makes an impassioned plea for the rights of trans people not to be sterilised. I agree. Does Stephen know that we are now, effectively, sterilising “transkids”? Is Stephen speaking out about this?


Yes. I agree you have the right to be parents. You know many “transmen” who have given birth. What will happen to the kids put on #PubertyBlockers followed by Cross-sex hormones?


Makes a clear statement activists did not want to campaign on “surgical status”. #LeaveNoOneBehind. Also that they have the right to bodily privacy,
Just trans folks? Do women have the right to bodily privacy?
Is this what passing looks like? Ignoring women?
Congratulations


An impassioned defence of the campaign for Self-Identification. Make no mistake this was a demand that women accept male-bodied women in single sex spaces. That was significant over-reach and a massive blunder. Women only spaces, regardless of surgery, is my stance now.
It has been exactly 3 years to "how fund managers .." was released. The book took a lot of time to write. Here is a short thread about how it happened ..


2/n the idea came from @kan_writersside who got me in touch with Dibakar Ghosh at @Rupa_Books .. we discussed the idea that it has been 2 decades to the fund management industry and it deserves a book. A lot was written about about Bharat Shah, Prashant Jain and S.Arora..

3/n but there was not much information about investment philosophies and the overall environment of the mid 90s and later on. Kanishk and Dibakar wanted a broader book for everyone and not just the stock market reader. We went to work

4/n we decided to write about the dotcom boom and bust where it all started. The start fund managers came from there. In Feb 2000 IT index had a pe multiple of 420 and the market cap of the sector was 34% of the market. Banks were 5% and some analysts were still bullish

5/n prashant Jain was one of the few fund managers who was out of the sector in November itself and was quietly watching the index go up. There were others but the legend of Jain was at the top of the mind because it is believed he refused to meet the CFO of a big IT company ..

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