Eclectic

A personal selection of key events around the peak of the geographical extent of the British Empire. The author falls down a series of historical rabbit holes. The retelling of the Amritsar Massacre pulls no punches, I found the the story of Marcus Garvey and the Blackstar Shipping Line fascinating. I would have liked more on Southern Africa. If you are a Brit like me, you won’t be left glowing with pride but you will be the wiser about for it.

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A unique perspective on Empire

The book gives a fascinating insight into many parts of the British Empire on one day, but also describes how each country got to that point. Using some key characters from its history brings what might be a set of disparate stories together eg Sir Hugh Clifford’s various roles, and also makes the telling of the story very personal. I came away from this book feeling that Britain didn’t set out to wrong our Empire, but ended up doing so because of our arrogance, avarice and ignorance.
The narration was sympathetic, with the slight caveat that the pauses between phrases were often unnaturally long.

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Excellent and sympathetic survey marred by performance

The British Empire at its territorial height and moment of greatest fragility — an enormous undertaking to treat fairly and accurately, and one Parker succeeds at. While full representation of the quarter of humanity under the empire would be impossible, we meet a wide range of those who would soon be pivotal in its downfall: colonial officials both hubristic and humane, the exploited and the exploiters of empire, the leaders of nascent independence movements and cultural luminaries on many sides of many major political and cultural questions of empire, with their many voices and biographies represented honestly.

The narrator is unfortunately not quite up to the task of conveying all this. He speaks, in what seems, to be long. And random. Pauses, as if he. Must stop for breath every, few words or perhaps. Is at the end of the, line on. Paper. If he is attempting to give the reader time to process phrases and clauses it would be helpful if the pauses corresponded with them. He also engages in the rather silly game of putting on accents, which at times feels appropriate but at others verges into parody, and at others is merely confusing: Canadians sound more Texan than anything else! A good narrator gets out of the way of the story. This narrator constantly injects his strange dramatic choices into the listener's attention, which unnecessarily detracts from an excellent review of a fascinating period of history.

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Great Listen

An excellent way to show how the British Empire went to seed. Recommend to anyone wanting to know about the British Empire

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