Teaching the history of the British Empire links in with that of the world: for better and for worse, the Empire made us what we are, forming our national identity. A country that does not understand its own history is unlikely to respect that of others.

Perhaps that is the greatest crime of conquest--that a civilization is denied the right to evolve beyond its own embarrassment.

England produced Shakespeare, and the British Empire the six-shilling novel.

... instead of trying to grapple with the implications of the story of empire, the British seem to have decided just to ignore it... the most corrosive part of this amnesia is a sense that because the nation is not what it was, it can never be anything again.

I've never felt British. I'm just not interested in national identity. I don't know why.

I am now a commander of the British Empire.