Something Rhymes with Purple - Sathnam Sanghera on why books can save us and how to understand Empire - How to Fail with Elizabeth Day

Episode Date: March 28, 2024

Sathnam has written Empireland and more recently Empireworld, two bestselling books which have garnered him critical acclaim, a Channel 4 documentary and which - even more crucially - have changed the national discourse around our colonial past. Without necessarily meaning to, Sathnam has become a historian. But his success has not been uncomplicated: he’s suffered horrendous racist abuse which has changed the way he goes out into the world (sometimes). On How to Fail Sathnam discusses how he avoids joining in, the importance of saying thank you and why the best teachers can make a lifelong impact. Plus: why nuance in discussion is often ignored but absolutely vital. How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to How to Fail with me, Elizabeth Day. In my podcast, we look at and celebrate our unique individual failures, because ultimately, they're the stepping stones to success. Every week, I invite a guest to look at their failures and what has come afterwards that might have helped them grow and succeed. And before we get into my interview with Satnam Sangheera, I'm excited to tell you that you can join me afterwards at Failing With Friends, my subscriber series, where we continue our conversation. It's our chance to hear from you and it's where we discuss your failures and questions. This week, Satnam and I will be looking at your failures from launching a film career to showstopper meals. It's a good one. Look forward to you joining us.

And I would love to hear from you. If you'd like to get in touch, follow the link in the podcast notes. Get Failing With Friends episodes every week and all episodes of How To Fail ad-free. Just visit the How To Fail show page on Apple Podcasts and click start free at the top of the page to begin your free trial. Or you can visit failingwithfriends.com if you're not an Apple user. Today, I'm delighted to welcome back a repeat guest and a dear friend to both me and the pod. Satnam Sangira was one of my first ever guests on How to Fail when it launched in 2018. In the six years since, a lot has changed for both of us. Satnam has gone on to become one of the most acclaimed non-fiction authors in the country after his third book, Empireland, How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain,

published in 2021, became an instant bestseller. It went on to reshape the discourse around our national history and was named Book of the Year at the British Book Awards. His new book, Empire World, How British Imperialism Shaped the Globe, takes this work one step further, looking at the legacies of empire across the world. It is a fantastically nuanced and revelatory, if not an easy, read. All this is a long way from Sangira's childhood in the West Midlands. Born to Punjabi parents, he entered the education system unable to speak English. His father could

not read or write, and there were no books in Sangira's home until he won a book token at school. As a child, he was illegally employed in a garment factory for 50p an hour. But he excelled at Wolverhampton Grammar School and went on to graduate from Cambridge University with a first-class degree in English. Since then, he's been a columnist, written both a novel and a memoir, which was later adapted for TV, and has been garlanded with awards, including Fellowship of the Royal Historical Society and an Honorary Doctorate from Wolverhampton University. Writing about empire has made him the target of racist abuse and trolling. But, Sangira says,

every day I have teachers and kids writing to me, and that is priceless. I would never have dared to dream that would happen happen and I will die happy because of that. Satnam Sangira, welcome back to How to Fail. Thank you. And look at you. Last time I did this, it was in your dingy. It wasn't dingy, but it was a small Kentish town flat. As listeners can already hear, we are dear friends. And my last book, Friendaholic, which was all about friendship, you feature heavily in it. There's an entire chapter devoted to you. You have taught me so much about life, but you have also in many ways taught the nation about their own history. And I wanted to end on that quote because it really brings it home how important education seems to be to you, both for you personally, but also, can't work for me anymore. Because when you're

the target of industrialized racial hatred, if you then slag yourself off, which is what we normally do, you let them win. And I need to learn to emphasize the positives and talk about it. But it goes against my nature. But I need to talk about the hundreds of schools who use the book as a teaching resource. I need to talk about, you know, the hundreds of schools who use the book as a teaching resource. I need to talk about the students who write to me every week saying they're studying history because of Empire Land. And, you know, I need to talk about, you know, the historians who endorse the book, you know, people like Peter Frankopan and Willem Terenpel and Elizabeth Day, you know, because if I don't talk about it, they kind of win, don't they? Before, there's basically one narrative. It was the narrative of the white colonisers.

And now there's multiple narratives. You can't put that back into a box. It is perpetually astonishing and somewhat distressing to realise that I am someone who is incredibly interested in history, and yet not even I had enough curiosity or self-awareness to do the work that you have done for the rest of us. And you're right that you have completely changed the conversation. And one of the things that your work is so good at, and Empire World, I think, is even better than Empire Land at putting this whole thing into context, is being nuanced. And we tend to have historically this idea that empire is a balance sheet where you can assess whether it's more good or more bad, depending on your particular political persuasion.

Why is it important to attack that balance sheet notion? In my lifetime, we've only ever really discussed empire about whether it's good or bad. And it's such an inane way of looking at history. It's like saying, I'm going to study the climate over the last 300 years, but I'm going to focus on the sunshine. It was much more complex than that. And actually what I discovered in Empire World, it was entirely contradictory, like in ways I didn't expect. So we spread slavery and monetized it. Same time, we also did something for anti-slavery. We spread democracy around the world, without doubt. A lot of the studies say that.

But also we spread massive instability, caused huge environmental destruction, but then helped to create modern environmentalism. We spread the free press, but then spread press censorship. And no book I've ever read really goes into the contradictory nature of that. They're usually making an argument about whether empire was great or terrible. It was both things. Opposite things can be true at the same time. I think you understand that. This podcast is a reflection of that. The idea that success can be rooted in failure. That's a

kind of profound comment. But I do think the idea that opposite things can be true could liberate us in many issues and in many areas of life. How difficult is that headspace to inhabit though? Because the amount of research that you clearly do for books like Empire Land and Empire World is not your average kind of research. Very often, you are visiting places that have a history of terrible trauma. And you have to convey this on the page whilst also having to contend with people who say, well, what about the railways? And I wonder how much of a difficult headspace that is to inhabit when you're in the act of writing and how you cope with that. An increasingly polarised country.

So the idea that obviously things can be true, there's not many people who are into it who are on the side of kind of team nuance. But those of us who are, you know, really need to talk about it. And I think certain mediums allow for it. I think certain podcasts allow for it. But books, I do think books are the thing that could save us as a world, will kind of enable us to accept the complexity of life. But how does it feel in your own head when you are researching and writing this book? It's confusing because when you go out in the world and talk about these things, they don't have that binary conversation. They have a very sophisticated sense of what the

British Empire did because they lived through it. But when you're over here, because we're disconnected because the empire didn't really happen in Britain, we have this very basic view, a basic way of talking about it. So actually, when you're outside in the world, it's not a problem. It's a problem when you're back here, and it's a problem when you're attacked. So when people have a go at me for slagging off the British or being mean about British history, and the other way, so the left sometimes have a go at me for not being harsh enough about British imperialism, when you're attacked, the temptation is to attack back and to answer with something binary.

But if you reply saying, actually, it's really complicated, that's quite unusual. But increasingly, we need to do that, I think. And how do you cope with those attacks? It depends on the day. Some days I get racially abusive letters and I find them funny. And I'll post them on Twitter and have a good laugh.

Sometimes it scares me. Yeah, and sometimes you call the police, you know. And I'm not the only person getting this stuff. You know, David Olusoga, it's a matter of record, he's a bodyguard. Professor Corrine Fowler, who wrote the colonialism report for the National Trust and was then targeted by the common sense group of Tory MPs and right-wing newspapers, she had to call the police several times, couldn't walk alone. There's a well-funded, relentless, government-endorsed campaign against imperial historians

for people offering nuance and new takes and thing is history's argument also history changes this is what a lot of people don't understand it's not like a jengo tower that's gonna so it's gonna fall if you change it history changes all the time our understanding of the romans is changing all the time our understanding of the bronze age is changing and our understanding of imperial history is absolutely changing, in part because I've realised whilst researching this book is that a lot of information was repressed at the time. A lot of the evidence was destroyed. You know, there was said to be a pool of smoke over Delhi when we left because of all the

documents being destroyed. The men who set up Nigeria famously burnt all the documents. So it's inevitable that the history is going to change. Ultimately, although your work is incredibly nuanced and so impressively well-researched, you end up making what seems to be such a simple point, which is that we cannot hope to understand ourselves as individuals or even as a nation or as a world unless we look at our past and seek to understand that and how it made us who we are today. Now, do you consider this to be part of your life's purpose? Because you could very easily

go off and write funny novels because you've proven that you can do that with marriage material. You wrote an incredibly moving memoir, The Boy with the Topknot, which was also very funny and was adapted for TV. You could have stayed in that lane, but you took this on. Is there something bigger than you that you think is driving this? I've had to think about this because the people in my life often ask me to not do this. And I'm thinking about possibly writing about a similarly difficult subject for my next book. And I think I'm drawn to really difficult conversations. I mean, writing about my life was really hard because I had to tell my parents I wasn't going to have an arranged marriage. It's the most difficult conversation I've ever had. Researching

schizophrenia was really difficult. It's a difficult disease. People cross the road to avoid these people. And to face up to the fact that my parent, my dad, and my sister had this illness was hard. And I think I'm drawn to it. I don't know why. I think it might have something to speak up for justice and equality. And even though I'm not religious, and a lot of some Sikhs even say I'm not a proper Sikh because I don't have a turban and all that, I think I've imbibed those values, and I'm inclined to get involved in really difficult situations. You mentioned there that your father and sister live with schizophrenia. And I wonder if, and you have spoken and written very movingly about it before, and not least the last time you were on How to Fail. But I wonder if that gives this whole sense of immersing yourself in such a toxic period of history, an extra anxiety, because you're aware of how mental health can be

so affected from external forces and also internal forces. Is there a sort of family worry there about you tipping over into some kind of abyss? Actually, it came up in my research for Empire World in that when you look at the legacy of slavery, there's academics who argue that there's a link between slavery and PTSD, like in further generations. And there's certain psychiatrists and psychologists who argue that black people coming to Europe

have a higher incidence of severe mental illness. And that might have something to do with slavery or something to do with the way black people or brown people are treated when they come over here. So I have thought about it. But in terms of myself, I don't know. Actually, I would say as difficult as this all has been recently, with the trolling, nothing was as hard as confronting my family. I think actually doing that makes everything else seem small and actually it gives you courage. You're a truth seeker.

You're a truth seeker of history, but you're also, I think, an emotional truth seeker. Like you want to show up honestly in whatever situation you find yourself in. Hope so. And actually, really, my name means truth is his name. It's one of the first words in the Sikh Bible. Wow. Okay, my final thing that I want to talk about before we get onto your failures, because I know we'll come back to the book because it pertains to one of your failures,

is that the last time you were on How to Fail in 2018, you spoke about your failure at the mundane things in life, your failure to own a car, to get married, to have kids. And I know that there were a lot of single ladies out there who were very moved by your plight. But now, happily, you have succeeded in one of those areas, haven't you? I think in many other areas i own a bmw estate if that's what you mean you owned a car yeah i bought my first car i was talking about your girlfriend i know i know but i do have a bmw estate but yes i do have a girlfriend she's called nor i think at one phase of my life i confused wanting to run away and escape my family with being an introvert okay and actually you know i never had any space when i was growing up i never had my own bedroom wanting to run away and escape my family with being an introvert. Okay.

And actually, you know, I never had any space when I was growing up. I never had my own bedroom until I went to university. I was never left alone to read a book. And I was an introvert who was into books and I was desperate for space. But then I think I took that too far. And then I confused being an introvert with wanting to be left alone. Zadie Smith. Oh my gosh, I know exactly the bit you're going to quote yeah what she said i hope i don't uh misquote her but she's saying freedom without duty and responsibility is not really freedom

and actually true freedom involves duty and responsibility and relationships because you know as an artist or as a writer you kind of want to be left alone to just do your stuff. And I felt that for a long time. But actually, if you don't have relationships and responsibilities, you're not really existing and you're not making the most of life. And actually, it's doing stuff for people and being asked to do stuff is where true freedom resides. And I think she's right. So I am navigating my space out of being an introvert and living alone for so long to

sharing that with someone. Beautifully put. By Zadie, not me. So your first failure actually follows on from that rather seamlessly. Your first failure is joining in. So what do you mean by joining in? I mean group activities. Let's go back to school because it's all about our childhood, isn't it? I'm obsessed with childhood sat-nam and let's absolutely go back to school because it was at primary school that you first, I think, understood that you were clever or that there was something slightly different about you because you were coming top of the class all the time. Yeah, I had teachers who got involved and got me into the grammar school and I was

top of everything, but then I wasn't top of everything. But in the sixth form, I was elected head boy, which is a very peculiar experience because I was never involved with any other groups. I never had more than two or three friends. I can't quite make sense of it. Maybe I was a clown or something. But everyone at school went to a certain nightclub, the Dorchester, which Catlin Moran has made famous now. And it was an indie club. And they all went there and had adventures with the opposite sex and had a great time I never went and I used to say it was because they played indie music and

I was a pop kid they weren't playing George Michael they weren't playing George so I would stay at home and listen to George and Mariah Carey and Prince and they would all be at the door just having a great time I totally missed that and it goes on I think I joined in my life I've joined several members clubs never last more than six months as you know I'm into F1 like your husband and I've been invited to the races several times I've been offered like packages probably worth tens of thousands of pounds never gone because I prefer watching it alone I don't even like watching it with people I just like being alone watching the F1 in my living room George Michael similarly you know

when he died there was an outpouring of grief in Highgate thousands of people left tributes I now live in Highgate and I didn't go and there's something in me that can't join in and I think I've missed out and okay so you've already defined yourself as an introvert we both are we know this about each other but where does the reticence is there a mistrust of groups i think maybe in your case maybe i'm a bit in mind being bullied makes you scared of groups And I was bullied as a kid when I had a top knot. I think also it's about fear of rejection, isn't it? It's about, oh my God, the group might not accept me.

But also opposite things can be true. And actually, maybe I just know myself. And I'm an introvert. Totally. Have you made steps now to try and join in more? Not really. No, I continue to be like that. But then again, I like being part of things.

So my family is pretty big now. Even my extended family is huge. But, you know, there's so many of them, we don't really hang out that much. But my immediate family, my nephews and nieces, have all got boyfriends and girlfriends. And so Christmas is a big affair. And I like being part of that. But equally it exhausts me. And, you know, I like being part of the times.

But equally I don't go in very often. And so it's something about being part of something, but not actually doing anything. I completely understand that. There's a sort of beauty in the concept of belonging and in the concept of acceptance. But yeah, I don't think I'm a joiner in, and I think like you, it comes from a fear of rejection

and being frightened of being the last person picked on a sporting team, which happened all the time to me. But it's paradoxical because actually, I think you might be like this, I love throwing a party. I love throwing a party too. But you know why? It's because you don't actually have to talk to anyone. Yes, I've thought a lot about why this is the case. Yeah, so I threw a party for my girlfriend and she was like, oh, who did you talk to? And I was like, literally no one because I was serving drinks

and making sure everyone else was being introduced to people. And then you create this idea that you've socialized, but actually you haven't been socialized with anyone. What's up, y'all? It's your man, Mark Strong. Strizzy. And your girl, Gem. the gem of all gems. And we're hosting Olympic FOMO,

your essential recap podcast of the 2024 Olympic Games in 20 minutes or less every day. We'll be going behind the scenes for all the wins, losses, and real talk with special guests from the Athletes' Village and around the world. You'll never have a fear of missing any Olympic action from Paris. Listen to Olympic FOMO wherever you get your podcasts. I want to go back to childhood sat-nav though. So I wonder if part of the fear of joining in is because we

confuse it from a childhood of not fitting in. Those two things are confusing. And you had a childhood where you were loved hugely by your family, but when you went outside the home, you had a top knot, you went to school. What was that experience like? Yeah, it was a massive bunch of contradictions. And I felt very alienated at school, quite a white school, not entirely, but quite white. Very white compared to where I was living. And I was basically living in a Punjabi village in Wolverhampton. You know, the doctor, the corner shop owner, the temple owner, everyone on the street was Punjabi.

Lots of people couldn't speak English. So it felt like traveling between worlds. And talk about code switching is really extreme. So I think maybe there's something about how when you switch between worlds like that, it's also exhausting. And maybe I'm tired out by people. Tell us about the garment factory, because we did touch on this the first time we spoke for How to Fail, but it's something that I still can't quite get my head around. I do have therapy actually around the corner. So this feels a bit like that, talking to you. And it comes up quite a lot.

And I think I had generally a very happy childhood, but that was bad. And, you know, all those hours wasted and being exploited. And I remember once asking the factory owner for a toy because he also ran a shop. And he didn't give it to me. He sold it to me. He deducted it for my wages. This guy actually remained in my family's life. And I saw him about 15 years ago.

And he basically said, I'm so proud of you. You know I made you the success you are. I taught you about work. And I could have thumped him. I really could have hit him. And interestingly, my mom feels the same. She was working in the factory. And, you know, she was proud of me.

And she also wanted me to learn about work because there's that Punjabi thing about the work ethic. But she also realized it damaged me, you know. But in terms of bad things that happened to you in your childhood, it wasn't that bad. How old were you? It was probably probably between the ages around 9 and 15 my mom did actually step in and say you've got to stop this and study for your GCSEs but yeah I mean I think it did damage me this um distaste for joining in I wonder also if it's about guarding privacy and whether you felt as a child that you were not

only code switching between a Punjabi village and your very white school, but also between a world of mental health issues and a world outside that didn't understand them. Was there a sense that you wanted to keep what your father and sister were going through private? You know, I think I am a very private person, which again seems a contradiction because I've written a memoir. But I will say that actually you'll never meet a more private person than a memoirist because, I don't know if this has been your experience, but once you put stuff out there, you really learn on how important it is

to control what you put out and when to put it out. And people often say to me, my god you shared so much but actually I didn't I took stuff out at my family's request and I control the narrative you've probably got more out of me than I've said in print in the last 15 years well you said this thing once which I thought was so brilliant that people assume if you talk openly or write openly about difficult things. Yeah, you do this. People have a definite sense of who you are. Yes. But they assume that you therefore share everything. But actually, neither you or I share everything. Yeah, loads of shit I know about you. Yes. And now is not the time to bring it up, Satnav. Your second failure is your failure

to say thank you. Regret about not thanking people before they die. Sorry to get morose. Never apologise for something so profound. Yeah, I have that with several people, but mainly with one particular person, my former English teacher, Robin Roberts, who was more than just a teacher. I mean, she really got me into English literature, So she changed my life in that way. But then when things were really difficult for me as a teenager with my sister and my dad suffering from schizophrenia, having breakdowns, she just intervened in a way that teachers wouldn't

now. And my mom calls her my second mom because she basically let me stay at hers whenever. Her boyfriend was there, so there was nothing dodgy going on. She could see or sense things were going wrong and that I might not get to university. So she would take me on to school trips where she was taking younger kids out. She would basically look after me. She came to my brother's wedding. She dropped me off at university and she helped me edit my books. She went and lived in Italy and we just became really great friends. And our relationship, you know, lasted many decades, but then she died very

suddenly. She got diagnosed on a Monday. I was dead by Friday. So I didn't get a chance to say goodbye to her. And if I'm honest, at the time, I was a bit annoyed with her because she'd got it into her head that the success was going to my head. And I think when you're in Italy and you're not in the media and you see social media posts, it's easy to think that, you know me, I never leave my house. Yeah. The success hadn't gone to my head. Never. But sometimes people

take it upon themselves to lecture you so I was a bit annoyed with her and the last time I saw her I was just passing through an airport and then she died and she actually left me she left me her small flat in Milan and made me her executor And I just felt absolutely terrible about it because I felt I hadn't said goodbye or thank you. Although obviously the first thing you do when someone dies is that you check what was the last email you sent them. And thank God, the last email I sent her was asking her if i could take her to rome for a week because i'd never been and i wanted to see her so i hope she knew that i loved her you know

um but it really cuts me up that i didn't properly say thank you and since then i probably thank people a lot i actually actually went and thanked my primary school headmaster who got me to Wolverhampton Grammar School just two months before he died. And I spoke at his funeral, and that was a great thing to do. So I think I've learned how to say thank you. I think part of it also is allowing people to say thank you. My mum's been a bit sick lately,

and hopefully she's going to get better, but she started saying thank you to me. I hate it. I absolutely hate it. I was like, why are you saying thank you? Because you made me. Everything I have in my life is because of you. Stop saying it.

But then I realised that for someone like her, who's never asked anyone for anything, it's important to say thank you. And also, you should let them say thank you. So my advice to people listening is, go and say thank you, not only to the people in your life, but also like your teachers, your writers who've changed your life. You know, nothing can be lost in saying thank you. There's not, what's the worst that can happen?

That's so beautiful thank you for talking about that and for talking about robin will you tell us more about the first time you met her do you remember yeah she was my english teacher and uh she was incredibly beautiful and i probably did have a bit of a crush on her I just wanted to impress her but more than that she got me before even I got myself she worked out that when she wrote the school reports that my parents weren't reading them because they my dad can't read and my mom can't couldn't at the time read English and so I sometimes wouldn't show my parents so she would write them to me she'd write little letters to me you know And she was the only teacher who understood that.

And that's quite a profound thing. And she never had kids of her own. Actually, much of her family, she was adopted and had a bad relationship with her family. So I think she got a real connection, not only from me, but from my family. I mean, she got on really well with my mom and loved coming

to family things and loved the food and the large family that she never had you told me you brought a report in today a school report oh yeah that's related to my next failure oh it's not it's not one from Robin no I couldn't read that out because it'd make me cry and you're not gonna make me cry you're allowed to cry I've almost made you cry I've seen you well up i mean i welled up i've never cried i just love that you chose this as a failure because it goes back to what we started off talking about the power of education it can change the course of someone's life but it can change the course of a nation's life i mean i don't want to speak in too self-grandizing terms about you but it really is extraordinary that

were it not for robin you might not be doing what you are now and that in itself is such a colossal thank you yeah i was into maths before her can you imagine oh my gosh i would have been like a shit we would never have met you would be have been Rishi Sunak, yeah, Prime Minister. But I suppose I wanted to talk to you about the teachers you've met since having published Empire Land and whether you feel that the children that you meet on your incredibly important school trips are being taught in a way that will make them into better citizens than we are. Yeah, this is what I've learned. I'm really teaching myself to sit in the moment

of something good happening. Because you know what I'm like, I'm inclined to be miserable. But the thing about Sattlam that he will never say about himself is that he's one of the kindest individuals you could possibly meet. So all of that coexists in the same way the rich empire spread both democracy and chaos you all these things can be true yeah i think i think also to be serious for a moment that element of misery as you describe it is because you are so compassionate and empathetic and also i think maybe i don't sit in the moment because it's too much it overwhelms me yeah and so when a child comes to you through their parents or whatever through email i've met a few of them and they say your book changed my life i'm now studying history at oxford i'm the

first one in my family to go to university it's like if i linger on that, I get upset, you know? Go on, linger on it then. He's about to cry. Don't show me getting emotional. Because one of the things I didn't put in the introduction, because there was just too much to say, is that you wrote a children's book called Stolen History that immediately became a number one bestseller and fulfilled a need that a lot of people didn't know that we had

or couldn't express that we needed. The history teachers who write to me, they're experts. They almost all have history degrees like you, not double firsts. And them endorsing the book, that's a profound thing. But when kids come to me and say, I'm applying for Oxbridge to study history, I really love your book. The tip I always give them is, look, go to the interview, say that if you want, but come up with reasons for why I'm wrong. Because they want to see independent thought. For me, success is having like an army of students who've gone into history because of my book, but also they can tear me apart because history is argument. Yes. What's the most surprising endorsement or response you got for Empireland?

Because I know that it felt like everyone read it, but there were some quite surprising people who seemed to read it. Yeah, quite a few Tory MPs. Probably Tim Stanley on the Daily Telegraph. And he said, the history seems to be on saturn i'm side and basically i have a point but that's quite a big thing and actually people have a go me all the time day and night about writing from the times because you know yeah there's stuff in the times i profoundly disagree with me and sometimes really upsets me and yeah i could leave and probably i'd have better mental health. But I think it's really powerful for me to be talking to people whose minds I can change.

And I can see them changing. I can also see them sending me racist abuse, but I can really see them changing their minds. And I'd rather be there than talking to the converted. Your final failure is an interest in history, as you put it to me. Yeah. failure is a an interest in history as you put it to me yeah so you've already said that you wouldn't have considered yourself a historian before you wrote two phenomenal works of history so is that what this failure is about yeah i mean i was really bad at history unlike you you know i actually bought my school a school report for you i looked it up for you this is me

age 11 i think or even like because i am bottom of the class and this is a classic historian though because you have kept the original documents so for anyone who is listening and not watching that wow what great writing this is like an old-fashioned school report yeah it is a clipped red cover and it's wolverhampton grammar school and i don't know why they were that shape, that sort of long rectangular shape. I have no idea. But they always were. Okay, so Satnam's got it in his hands and he's about to read. Apparently my performance was somewhat variable.

And you know that thing they did was where they ranked us in sets, which is probably very psychologically damaging. Yeah. I don't think they do that anymore. Do they not? No. My percentage marks for the year were 48%. For history?

History. And I was 22nd out of 24 pupils his answers can be rather lacking in depth rather and they were very lucky but the thing is i was everything they talked about like tolland man martin luther i had absolutely no interest in i am interested in those things now because I find all history interesting. But I think there was something kind of profound happening there in that if you're poor, your dad has schizophrenia, you know, you're working in a factory. One of your first memories is of a race riot. You're not that interested in the past. I was focused on the future.

That's all I cared about. And also they didn't bloody help in that they didn't show us in the history ever. When I look back on it, it's shocking because we studied World War I and World War II at great length. I did it for GCSE. Not once was it mentioned that millions of Indian soldiers had fought in war. Not once. We studied the Tudors. Not once did anyone say, by the way, there were black people in Henry VII's and Henry VIII's court. Not once. It should study the Tudors. Not once did anyone say, by the way, there were black

people in Henry VII and Henry VIII's court. Not once. It's bizarre, isn't it? And the Industrial Revolution, which we studied at great length, no mention of the incredibly fascinating debate about whether the money from slavery had helped finance the Industrial Revolution. And there's something that came up when I was writing Empire World. You know, we studied the Treaty of Versailles for, felt like, five years. No one mentioned a really fascinating thing about how Japan had tried to insert a clause about racial equality into the treaty. I talk about it in Empire World. Yeah, I'd never come across that until I read about it in Empire World.

Yes. And then the British Empire and all the former imperial nations conspired together to get rid of it, to make sure it didn't happen. And that's because the British Empire was the greatest propagator and incubator of white supremacy in the history of the world, as I argue at great length in the book. It would have been really interesting to discuss that, wouldn't it? Also, empire made total sense of everything around us. Enoch Powell, who was the local MP, it made sense of why we were such a racially diverse city. It made sense of me as a Sikh, how Sikhs' identity was shaped by the British Empire. And yet, no one taught us anything about this fascinating history. British Empire is probably the biggest thing that happened to... one of the biggest things that ever happened to. British Empire is probably the biggest thing that happened to, one of the biggest things that ever happened to the world. It was the biggest empire in human history.

Why not teach it? So the failure to be interested in history was partly mine, but also it was theirs. Are you angry? Yeah, it really pisses me off. Because also when I look back at my career, I think I've always been into history. My memoir was an attempt to understand my family's history. My novel was about the history of the Asian community in Britain.

Empireland is a history book. And actually, I've probably always been interested in history. And I understand that to understand, to navigate the future, you need to understand your past. In the 1990s, around the time I was still a student bernard manning appeared on bbc2 and on the caroline merton show and famously said that you know there were no p***s at dunkirk it's amazing that made primetime tv but he was right in the sense that pakistan didn't exist then because it was part of india but he was wrong because there were literally indians stroke p***s at Dunkirk. But that was allowed to pass. And now we've got people like Lawrence Fox,

who've built an entire career. The thing that made him famous was going apeshit about a Sikh in that film, that first World War movie. Oh, yes, 1917, the Sam Mendes movie. Yeah, and there were literally Sikhs there. It's like, how can this still happen? I think also that viewing it from my perspective, which is I cannot even conceive of what you go through

on a day-to-day basis in terms of the level of abuse and trolling you get, there is such a resistance, particularly amongst racist areas, racist corners of the globe, to the idea that you are challenging the greatness of this country. And actually, my perception is you completely love this country, and part of loving someone, some identity, something, is understanding and accepting the past and how it made them. Totally. God, my memoir was an act of an historian. I spent two years going through the history. It was an act of love. I discovered really difficult, painful things that I rather would not have written about or thought about. But it's because I love my family, I did it. And I feel the

same about Britain. It's because I love this country that i spend the time researching its history and actually one of the things you discover when you look at imperial history is that people fighting imperialism in the establishment some of them in really influential roles within the empire were part of that imperial story too every aspect of the the British imperial story was resisted by people, whether it's George Orwell or James Stephen, the grandfather of Virginia Woolf, who I write about in Empire World. It was a constant auto-criticism that was there right from the beginning. Talking of auto-criticism, I wonder how difficult it is for you to switch that synapse off, because Empire World starts with you seemingly being on holiday in Barbados, and there is a

trip to the airport where every single element reminds you of something to do with Empire, or is directly connected to something to do with Empire. And I wonder how frustrating that is for you but also for your loved ones for your girlfriend who's on holiday with you yeah i do i talk about in the book how i dragged her off to some former slave plantations whilst i was on holiday she's actually got a degree in history too and i think there's got to come a point where I've got to stop writing about this. And there will, because it's kind of relentless. I feel like I want to do something completely. I need to do it for my sanity.

And I have got other interests. But it's odd because a lot of people who don't really have read the book, don't really know me, think this is the only thing I've ever done. And it's quite odd because actually I think one of my career failures is not having done one thing. I feel like if you want to make it as a writer, you do one kind of thing really well and you become known for it, you know? Whereas I've done memoir, novel, history book, kids book, you know what I mean? It's not anything seemingly connecting it all. I know exactly what you mean, but... You've done lots of

different stuff yes exactly but i would contend that you absolutely have made it do i asked you this the first time you came on how to fail do you feel like a success i do now why why now what's changed now i think you can't deny i'm gonna sound like whitney houston or stevie wonder in that song you can't deny the testimony of children when they're standing up and telling you you've changed their lives awards and sales whatever you can mentally argue yourself out of because they're random we've all judged awards we know how political and random they are but actually you can't compete you can't say anything to that except thanks my final question what will success look like for you with empire world what do you want empire world to do

i just really want some sane conversations and i don't want racist abuse i just actually want to have an intelligent conversation on it that isn't focused on whether empire was good or bad. That is still the main question I get. You know, people come to events to shout at me and to complain. I've not been nice enough about empire. And it's like, come on. So I just hope the quality of the conversation gets better. This is a good start.

Thank you. I hope that you know for every single item of racist abuse that is levelled at you, that there is a huge silent on social media majority who are so grateful for every single word you write and all of the work that you put out there. And they talk to me about it a lot because they know that I know you. there and they talk to me about it a lot because they know that I know you and I just want to say thank you inspired by you and one of your failures I want to say thank you to you for everything that you do and I also want to say thank you for trusting me enough to come back on how to fail oh thanks for having me on again um it's beyond the call of duty just a quick reminder that we continue the conversation

with satnam sangira over at failing with friends it's a wonderful community of subscribers where we chat through your failures and questions you know a lot about rejection yeah thanks yeah and i don't just mean romantically i don't mean that at all yeah there's a lot of that there no you're in hot demand all the time if you're not yet a subscriber i'd love for you to join us just visit the how to fail show page on apple podcasts and click start free at the top of the page to begin your free trial and start listening today. And I would love to hear from you. If you'd like to get in touch, follow the link in the podcast notes. Get Failing With Friends episodes every week and all episodes of How To Fail ad free. Just visit the How To Fail show page on Apple Podcasts and click Start Free at the top of

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