Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain | JLF London

A session which explores the reality and legacy of the British empire. Sathnam Sanghera’s latestbook, Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain, is a brilliant commentary on the often painful shared history that impacted large parts of the world. Sanghera’s acclaimed narrative focuses on the importance of accepting Britain’s imperial past in order to understand its present and future.
William Dalrymple’s recent release is the Company Quartet, a four-book collection chronicling the extraordinary story of the rise and fall of the East India Company which spans over 200 years of tumultuous colonial history, covert political machinations and bloody resistance. Author and politician Swapan Dasgupta’s latest book is Awakening Bharat Mata: The Political
Beliefs of the Indian Right. Together, they speak to academic and author Mukulika Banerjee to understand why the existence of the British Empire is often forgotten in Britain and the importance of coming to terms with a troubled past.

Sathnam Sanghera was born to Punjabi immigrant parents in Wolverhampton in 1976. He entered the education system unable to speak English but, after attending Wolverhampton Grammar School, graduated from Christs College, Cambridge with a first-class degree in English Language and Literature in 1998. He has been shortlisted for the Costa Book Awards twice, for his memoir The Boy With the Topknot and his novel Marriage Material, and has also been shortlisted for, or won, the Desmond Elliott Prize, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the PEN Ackerley Prize and Mind Book of the Year. He has won numerous prizes for his journalism at the Financial Times and The Times, including Young Journalist of the Year in 2002, Media Commentator of the Year in 2015 and the Edgar Wallace Trophy for Writing of the Highest Quality at the 2017 London Press Club Awards. His third book, Empireland: How Imperialism Shaped Modern Britain, became an instant Sunday Times bestseller on release in 2021.

William Dalrymple is the bestselling author of In Xanadu, City of Djinns, From the Holy Mountain, Age of Kali, White Mughals, The Last Mughal, Nine Lives, Return of a King and Kohinoor. He has won many awards, including the Wolfson Prize for History, the Hemingway, the Kapuscinski, the Thomas Cook, and the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize. He has also been
awarded the Arthur Ross Bronze Medal of the US Council on Foreign Relations and the prestigious President's Medal by the British Academy. His most recent books are The Company Quartet, The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company and Forgotten Masters:
Indian Painting for the East India Company. Dalrymple is one of the founders and a co-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival.

Swapan Dasgupta is a Member of Parliament and columnist for major Indian newspapers. A journalist for 30 years, he occupied senior editorial positions at the Times of India, Indian Express and India Today. He writes regular columns for the Times of India, Telegraph and Pioneer, and is a commentator on TV networks. He is the author of Awakening Bharat Mata: The Political Beliefs of the Indian Right. In 2015, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan and was nominated to the Rajya Sabha.

Mukulika Banerjee was inaugural Director of the LSE South Asia Centre from 2015-2020 and is Associate Professor in Social Anthropology at the London School of Economics. She studied in Delhi and Oxford universities and taught at Oxford and UCL before joining LSE. Her books include Why India Votes?, The Pathan Unarmed and The Sari and edited Muslim Portraits. She has just completed a monograph, Cultivating Democracy: Politics and Citizenship in Agrarian India.

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