MixedThe Times Literary Supplement (UK)Supremely readable ... What he brings is an inviting style, together with a conscientious journalistic ability to précis impressive amounts of historical material ... For older readers the downside to his style will be the perpetual centring of self, with his own experiences so often providing the architecture for complex historical and ethical controversies ... For all the book’s conscientious attempts to avoid the balance sheet, this is exactly what we are presented with. With heavily footnoted horror Sanghera recounts a rap sheet of extraction, brutality, capture, turmoil and depredation. He then also highlights the Empire’s legacy of humanitarianism, conservation, democracy and education. In the process we lose a deeper context where the motivation of historical actors might be unpicked, the normalcy of empire as a model of political governance explained.
Joseph Sassoon
RaveTimes Literary Supplement (UK)[A] scholarly and wide-ranging corporate and family history, which deftly charts their exploitation of the British Empire, before the sticky embrace of the English aristocracy suffocated their commercial ambition ... Sassoon...moves between underplayed nostalgia and a clinical account of the family’s business demise.
