Spare us the wagging finger

Few things are more tedious than books moralising about the deficiencies of yesteryear

THE SOCIAL HISTORIAN Dominic Sandbrook could recently be found in the Culture section of the Sunday Times reviewing a book called Imperial Island: A History of Empire in Modern Britain by Charlotte Lydia Riley. Sandbrook, who knows his onions, didn’t seem to think a great deal of Dr Riley’s opus, but his principal complaint was reserved for its deep-dyed censoriousness. The author, he declared, “has a remarkable enthusiasm for telling people off”. The luckless victims of her asperity included Pathé newsreels for celebrating “white athletes and swimmers from Britain”, Ladybird books (these are guilty of “imperial patriotism”) and Melvyn Bragg for daring to describe William Wilberforce as “a great man”. Even Band Aid, one of the great charitable endeavours of the 1980s, is criticised for its “comforting colonial humanitarianism”. DR…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, November 2023

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