Sorry for the long silence. I’ve been busy: attending and speaking at the funeral in England of a beloved ex-colleague – that’s three of my close contemporaries gone in the last year or so, with just three of us left: who’ll be next? – and exhausting journeys for that and to visit – more enjoyably – my Ukrainan refugees, now installed in my UK home, plus two of my children and their families. Back in Sweden now, I’ve just written a long review of a book on ‘the happiness of the British working class’ (in the 19th century), and a new Preface for the re-issue later this year of a forty-year old book of mine. These tasks have taken my mind off the sadness, temporarily, and given me a reason for continuing to live. I write, therefore I am.

That’s all there is to it, really. I write because I need to write – for no other reason. It’s pure self-indulgence. I’ve given up hoping to influence people with my ideas, in view of the pretty poor sales and non-existent press reviews of my most recent books; which – if people read them – ought to put them right about British imperialism, in particular. There’s so much nonsense being talked now about that, from Rees-Mogg on the idiot Right to the callow young statue-topplers on the Left. But people don’t read me on that; instead they go to rank amateurs – the aforesaid Rees-Mogg, Boris Johnson, Jeremy Paxman – whose celebrity and therefore attraction to readers rest on other grounds entirely. (The exception may be the assertive Rightist academic Niall Ferguson; but he was never an imperial historian au fond.)

But then, as that other amateur Michael Gove asserted a few years ago: ‘people in this country have had enough of experts’; of whom – on this subject – I’m one. I try to write clearly and attractively for a general readership, with even a few jokes to enliven my narrative; but it doesn’t get through. The great British public bases its ideas about almost everything on prejudice, self-interest, the tabloid press, un-mediated propaganda, celebrity, and – especially perhaps these days – ad hominem assumptions about the people who are offering their opinions. I’m not seen on telly, or lounging on the Commons benches, or mouthing off about anything; I’m not part of the London or Oxbridge literati, despite my stint writing for the LRB; I live in Hull, for God’s sake, or far away in Sweden; I’m pretty ordinary – even dull – apart from my writing; and my views on imperialism – or anything else – can’t be reduced to simple slogans. So I’m not getting through. – Or is it simply that my writing is crap? Or my poor choice of publishers? I’m reluctant to think that. I’ve been through about a dozen of them over the years, from OUP and CUP ‘downwards’; and they’ve (mostly) worked pretty hard for me. But in any case that’s now all water – and words – under the bridge. I no longer really care. As long as I’m still writing. Like here.

Moan over. And I don’t think that this is at the root of my enduring depression just now. There are far more serious things, outside my personal experience, to depress any left-leaning progressive Englishman or woman these days; including the current political state of our country of birth, its impact on fellow-citizens far more vulnerable than ourselves, the situation in Ukraine and Turkey, the rise of proto-fascism globally, US politics, climate change, blah blah blah… as many blahs as you can think of.

To which I personally would want to add the situation in my adoptive country of Sweden, which appears to be catching up with Britain and America in the worst ways possible: i.e. sliding to the Right. The forcible extradition (after 18 years’ residence) of an elderly and bed-ridden British woman who was too incapacitated with Altzheimers to be able to fill in the forms that would have allowed her to stay in the country post-Brexit, with police officers rummaging through her belongings to see what she will have to take back with her, is the latest indication of this: see https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/feb/15/european-commission-contacts-sweden-plans-deport-british-woman-brexit. Suella Braverman would have been proud of this. It’s all the doing of the Nazi-origin ‘Sweden Democrats’; a minority party, not actually part of the current governing Centre-Right coalition, but seemingly wielding great influence on the government. Remind you of UKIP, anyone?

Back to imperialism. Why don’t you go out and buy British Imperial: What the Empire Wasn’t? It might boost my sales – and hence my mood – by one or two points.