David Olusoga

“Everyone is happy for the history of slavery to be investigated so long as the investigation examines the parts in which we look good.”

“I am as much British, white and working class, my mother's background, as I am black and Nigerian, my father's heritage.”

“I've received tweets that I suspect people wouldn't have sent in 2015. Is that a changed country or is that people who are unpleasant feeling emboldened to speak?”

“Talking about class and identity can be as divisive as talking about race and racism.”

“Historians spend their days engaged in the literally endless task of reshaping and expanding our view of the past, while statues are fixed and inflexible.”

“The nation of 2019, exponentially wealthier, appears to have a fraction of its former self-belief and little faith in its capacity to solve the latest in a long line of housing crises that stretch back to the 18th century.”

“Along with never having got round to writing down our constitution and having a monarch who legally owns all the swans, one of the things that makes the UK a bit of an outlier is our university admissions system.”

“As a historian, I always think you know what a moment was 20 years later.”

“As well as remembering the service of the non-white soldiers and auxiliaries of the first world war, we have also to remember what happened to them and their dreams of justice in the months and years after the armistice.”

“I went to school in the 70s and the 80s, and the last thing I expected of my schools back then was that they would be the places in which I would be taught about black history.”

“A hard Brexit would be so damaging to the true interests of the UK that what might follow - if we are lucky - is a great unmasking, not just of the political fantasists and chancers who peddled the great Brexit swindle, but of the historical delusion that empowered them.”

“Even the building of a second British empire in the 19th century never fully healed the wound of losing America, and the end of Britain's imperial prestige after the second world war has cut deeper.”

“I finally got to watch 'Roots' in my mid-teens, on a video rental. Slowly and meticulously Roots fed its black characters through the mincing machine of American slavery. People with names, hopes and family connections were destroyed and dehumanised before my eyes.”

“Democratically elected governments meekly requesting giant corporations to pay pitifully low levels of tax on their enormous profits is not a good look.”

“After 150 years, Bristol's prime music venue is to finally change its name and thereby cut its link to the infamous slave trader Edward Colston.”

“History suggests that the disillusioned and the disaffected do not readily take to the streets nor man the barricades to defend a system that failed to defend them.”

“I think I was eight the first time I saw the Benin bronzes. I was taken to see them at the British Museum by my white, British mother, who felt it important that her half-Nigerian children learned about the artistic achievements of their forefathers. I've been entranced by them ever since.”

“At 18, I stood in the Louvre in front of the paintings that TV had first shown me.”

“No matter that you're a British citizen, no matter that you were born here - your skin colour means you do not have the same rights as others to express critical opinions about your own country.”

“From daycare to graduation, our education system stacks the odds against the poor. Predicted grades is just one of many hurdles that are set a little higher for those whose parents do not have the money to smooth their path in life or the inside knowledge of how the system works.”