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Sathnam Sanghera: The culture war is over

The Empireworld author describes the threats he faces and says “feelings are irrelevant” to history

Writer Sathnam Sanghera told HARDtalk that he has faced “stalking situations and occasionally had to worry about my personal security”, due to his writing.

Speaking to Stephen Sackur, the author of Empireworld, disclosed that his experiences had been “pretty horrible” and led him to stop doing certain events “because of all the shouting and the screaming”. But he said other historians had faced worse threats than him. Sanghera started receiving racist abuse when he began writing about Britain’s imperial history.

Nonetheless, Sanghera asserted that “the culture war that has led to all this behaviour is kind of over”. He said the public is more willing than politicians to re-evaluate Britain’s imperial history, citing a Savanta poll which indicated that 44% “think the royal family should pay reparations for slavery”. Sanghera said he was “quite optimistic that the population are over this culture war, way before the politicians”.

Sanghera, whose latest book Empireworld explores the global legacies of British imperialism, said: “history is an intellectual exercise”.

“It's got nothing to do with pride, shame: your feelings are irrelevant”.

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