100 Quotes by David Olusoga

By 1956, London Transport was recruiting in Barbados, even loaning migrants the costs of their passage to Britain. British Rail placed ads in the Barbados Labour Office and the NHS appealed to West Indian women to come to Britain and train to become nurses.

Whether we like it or not, there are moments in history when pessimism is the appropriate response.

But Johnson's Churchill-lite shtick and Theresa May's even less convincing Iron Lady routine are only even vaguely viable because they tap into a fantasy version of British history that has contaminated visions of our conceivable future.

A hard Brexit would be so damaging to the true interests of the UK that what might follow - if we are lucky - is a great unmasking, not just of the political fantasists and chancers who peddled the great Brexit swindle, but of the historical delusion that empowered them.

My view as a historian is that the empire was an extractive, exploitative, racist and violent institution and that the history of empire is one we need to confront and come to terms with, rather than celebrate.

Black history is a series of missing chapters from British history. I'm trying to put those bits back in.

The history of the British empire, the chapter of our national story that would have explained to my classmates why a child born in Nigeria was sat among them, was similarly missing from the curriculum.

It is of course perfectly possible for a university, or any institution, to carry out a rigorous investigation into the historical origins of its accumulated wealth, while at the same time putting in place systems to address modern inequalities of access and attainment.

Everyone is happy for the history of slavery to be investigated so long as the investigation examines the parts in which we look good.