A short, polemical study of the persistence of imperial nostalgia in modern British culture, politics, heritage and media.

Mitchell presents a snappy overview of how our national discussions around race, gender and class are shot through with the psychic ghosts of the British empire. Covering the huge range of art, entertainment, political rhetoric, and aesthetics that engage with a particular imaginary of empire, this book takes the reader on an intellectual tour of contemporary cultural battlegrounds.

A strong emotional attachment to the memory of empire runs deep in British culture. In recent years, that memory has become a battleground in a long-drawn ideological war, inflecting debates on race, class, gender, culture, the UK’s future and its place in the world. This provocative and passionate book surveys the scene of the imperial memory wars in contemporary Britain, exploring how the myths that structure our views of empire came to be, and how they inform the present. Taking in such diverse subjects as Rory Stewart and inter-war adventure fiction, man’s facial hair and Kipling, the Alt-right and the Red Wall, Imperial Nostalgia asks how our relationship with our national past has gone wrong, and how it might be improved.

Poetry. IMPERIAL NOSTALGIAS is the second collection by poet and translator Joshua Edwards. Written in Mexico, China, Germany, Nicaragua, and during a train trip around the U.S. and Canada, the book reckons with itinerancy, innocence, and American privilege, while pointing toward a strange horizon. "'Through a turnstile, past a diorama / of ruins, into the ruins themselves, ' Joshua Edwards escorts us into the desert of the real in his haunting and prismatic second collection, IMPERIAL NOSTALGIAS. Deepening the archaeological excavation--or is it a salvage operation?--of his first book, CAMPECHE, Edwards brushes the dust from the remains of history, desire, and nostalgia itself, to reveal 'ruins as diorama, ruins as sculpture, / birds as music boxes. Everything / moves toward metaphor and dream.' A breathtaking cascade of parables, images, lyrics, and aphorisms, IMPERIAL NOSTALGIAS is necessary work, and required reading for anyone who has felt the cold undertow beneath all beauty. 'Life, ' writes this poet, 'is terrible enough without swans.'"--Srikanth Reddy Symbolic gestures feel bound not by referential expression, but by mystery and drama. If all languages are essentially alike, then softness or firmness is a matter of tissues in which blood takes a clausal complement. Taste for etymology, however, comes from the poetry of crucial decision making, fruit in one hand and broad-bladed knife in the other.

A best-selling journalist’s illuminating tour through the hidden legacies and modern realities of British empire that exposes how much of the present-day United Kingdom is actually rooted in its colonial past. Empireland boldly and lucidly makes the case that in order to understand America, we must first understand British imperialism. "Empireland is brilliantly written, deeply researched and massively important. It’ll stay in your head for years.” —John Oliver, Emmy Award-winning host of "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" With a new introduction by the author and a foreword by Booker Prize-winner Marlon James A best-selling journalist’s illuminating tour through the hidden legacies and modern realities of British empire that exposes how much of the present-day United Kingdom is actually rooted in its colonial past. Empireland boldly and lucidly makes the case that in order to understand America, we must first understand British imperialism. Empire—whether British or otherwise—informs nearly everything we do. From common thought to our daily routines; from the foundations of social safety nets to the realities of racism; and from the distrust of public intellectuals to the exceptionalism that permeates immigration debates, the Brexit campaign and the global reckonings with controversial memorials, Empireland shows how the pernicious legacy of Western imperialism undergirds our everyday lives, yet remains shockingly obscured from view. In accessible, witty prose, award-winning journalist and best-selling author Sathnam Sanghera traces this legacy back to its source, exposing how—in both profound and innocuous ways—imperial domination has shaped the United Kingdom we know today. Sanghera connects the historical dots across continents and seas to show how the shadows of a colonial past still linger over modern-day Britain and how the world, in turn, was shaped by Britain’s looming hand. The implications, of course, extend to Britain’s most notorious former colony turned imperial power: the United States of America, which prides itself for its maverick soul and yet seems to have inherited all the ambition, brutality and exceptional thinking of its parent. With a foreword by Booker Prize–winner Marlon James, Empireland is a revelatory and lucid work of political history that offers a sobering appraisal of the past so we may move toward a more just future.

"The Last Imperialist: Sir Alan Burns' Epic Defense of the British Empires studies Sir Alan Burns' career and his arguments in defense of European colonialism. Bruce Gilley describes Burns' intellectual and policy battles with opponents of colonialism and his efforts to slow the decolonization process"--

Comparative study of the writings and strategies of European women in two colonies, French Algeria and British Kenya, during the twentieth century. Its central theme is women's discursive contribution to the construction of colonial nostalgia.