Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine.

Controversies surrounding the history of the British Empire have become particularly intense in recent years,

with academics, politicians and commentators all offering differing views

about how we should understand our nation's imperial past.

A new book, The Truth About Empire, delves into this debate,

with a stated aim of foregrounding the views of historians.

Matt Elton spoke to three people involved in the project to find out more.

So I'm joined today by three people involved in a new book, The Truth About Empire, Real Histories of British Colonialism.

And before we go any further, I thought it would be amazing if they could all introduce themselves.

I'm Alan Lester. I'm a professor of historical geography at University of Sussex and

an adjunct professor of history at La Trobe University in Australia.

I'm Bronwyn Everl. I'm the director of the Centre of African Studies at Cambridge.

I'm a lecturer at Gonville and Keys College here.

And I am a visiting fellow at the Department

of Economics at Stellan Bosch University.

I'm Sam Sangerha. I'm a journalist with The Times. I'm also an author of Empire Land,

Empire World, and a kid's book, Stolen History. Thank you all so much for being here to talk about the book.

Before we go any further, I wanted to ask what the sort of the aims of the book were,

because this is a subject that's been hotly contested much in the news.

I wondered whether there were kind of briefly things you set out to do by putting this project together.

Yeah, I think I had the idea for this book

in the context that you've just mentioned

...