We Need to Talk About the British Empire - Afua Hirsch - 2020







Written by: Afua Hirsch

Length: 3 hrs and 45 mins

Podcast

Release date: 02-13-2020

Language: English

Categories: ‎European History, Politics & Government

Publisher: Audible Originals

Format: mp3 64/48 stereo



Publisher's Summary



Making sense of the British Empire's legacy... through the stories of people who lived through it.



Through six intimate conversations with a new generation of writers and historians - journalist Afua Hirsch tries to break through old cliches, and unpick the true legacy of this complicated and difficult inheritance.



She speaks to leading figures in British culture today - from poet Benjamin Zephaniah to actress Diana Rigg, broadcaster Anita Rani to novelist Nadifa Mohamed - discovering vivid family stories of the people who made the Empire what it was. And she hears how its ripples continue to shape our lives, and sense of collective identity today: our attitudes and cultural values, the multicultural, multiracial population of the British Isles today, and the relationships that Britain has with other parts of the world.



A Somethin’ Else Production.



This is an Audible Original Podcast.



Episodes



Ep. 1: Anita Rani



Broadcaster Anita Rani's story is of a long-hidden family secret, one rooted in India’s Partition in 1947. A secret that changed not just everything Anita thought she knew about Britain’s legacy in India... but rocked her own sense of identity.

37 mins



Ep. 2: Nadifa Mohamed



When British-Somali writer Nadifa Mohamed sought to draw on her father’s life as a colonial subject for her first novel, she never dreamed he would unravel the tale of a modern-day Odysseus - and lift the lid on parts of the British Empire the history books often forget.

40 mins



Ep. 3: Joseph Opala & Emory Campbell



The story of a tiny, forgotten island in a West African river delta - and a proud community in the Eastern USA - reveals new and shocking insights into Britain’s involvement in the Transatlantic slave trade.

35 mins



Ep. 4: Dame Diana Rigg



Star of stage and screen Dame Diana Rigg tells the story of her childhood in 1940s colonial India - as her working-class family attempted to scale the social ladder and make a better life for themselves in the final, turbulent days of the British Raj.

39 mins



Ep. 5: Benjamin Zephaniah



Poet Benjamin Zephaniah’s mother Valerie was a member of the "Windrush generation" of British subjects who were invited to the UK from the Caribbean in the 1950s.

He talks to Afua about how his own generation sought to forge a new sense of British identity - and how those political and cultural values brought him into conflict with not just the British Establishment - but his own beloved Mum.

36 mins



Ep. 6: Emma-Lee Moss



What happens when Empire leaves a country - and its people - behind? Singer-songwriter Emma-Lee Moss left Hong Kong as a teenager, shortly before the UK handed the colony over to China in 1997. She unpicks the story of one of the last embers of the once-mighty British Empire - presenting a uniquely different relationship between a colonial government and its people.



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