I haven't read the book.

I am aware of English history, and I am also aware that perspectives on it coming from academics in countries that were subject to British imperialism are generally a bit more scathing than those found in English or American publications.

Even world maps are still disproportionate in the way they represent the size of Britain and Ireland. You would think Mali or Libya weren't actually that big by comparison if it weren't for other source material.

And it is of course important that this kind of post colonial nostalgia have it's bubble burst from time to time, lest the world forget and be insppired to come up with copycat ideas like lebensraum (Hitler was equally inspired by other altogether more embarrassing aspects of British history - slaughter of jews being one and concentration camps being another).

HOWEVER!

Merely listing atrocities committed by a country comes to me from a questionable motive. It sounds like a pretty fundamentalist way of looking at history.

It seems like an immature attempt to tittilate the ego's of the "right-on"'s in society. What historical value does it have?

It lists historical events that have already been uncovered without offering any new perspectives by the sound of it, so it isn't saying anything that we don't alrready know.

I would call it an "ammo" book for the Brit basher, and the aforementioned "right-on"'s. I can imagine army's of socialist worker newspaper sellers with well thumbed copies in their back pockets ready to whip them out like penis extensions, at a moments notice, to justify whatever spurious theory they have chosen to espouse for that moment.

... just a gut reaction to a book I haven't read though ...