Sara & Cariad's Weirdos Book Club - English Passengers by Matthew Kneale with Sathnam Sanghera

Episode Date: February 8, 2024

This week's book guest is English Passengers by Matthew Kneale.Sara and Cariad are joined by journalist and author Sathnam Sanghera to discuss the Garden of Eden, rum, tea, charities, imperial decisions and straight lines. Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you!Trigger warning: In this episode we discuss we discuss racism, racial genocide, sexual assault, rape and graphic imagery.English Passengers by Matthew Kneale is available to buy here or on Apple Books here.Empireworld by Sathnam Sanghera is available to buy here or on Apple Books here.You can find Sathnam on Instagram: @sathnamsanghera and Twitter: @sathnamSara’s debut novel Weirdo is published by Faber & Faber and is available to buy here.Cariad’s book You Are Not Alone is published by Bloomsbury and is available to buy here.Follow Sara & Cariad’s Weirdos Book Club on Instagram @saraandcariadsweirdosbookclub and Twitter @weirdosbookclub Recorded and edited by Naomi Parnell for Plosive.Artwork by Welcome Studio.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sarah Pasco. Hello, I'm Carriad Lloyd. And we're weird about books. We love to read. We read too much. We talk too much. About the too much that we've read. Which is why we've created the Weirdos Book Club.

Join us. A space for the lonely outsider to feel accepted and appreciated. A place for the person who'd love to be in a real book club, but doesn't like wine or nibbles. Or being around other people. Is that you? Join us. Check out our Instagram at Sarah and Carriad's Weirdo's Book Club for the upcoming books we're going to be discussing. You can read along and share your opinions.

Or just skulk around in your raincoat like the weirdo you are. Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you. This week's book guest is English Passengers by Matthew Neal. What's it about? It's a multi-character exploration of a British merchant ship sailing towards Tasmania and the indigenous population of Tasmania who they find there. What qualifies it for the weirdos book club?

Well, there's a weird Vicar for one and a guy called Quibbley. In this episode we discuss the Garden of Eden. Rum. Tea, charities, straight lines, guilt, imperial decisions and the Isle of Man. And joining us this week is Satnam Sangara. Satnam is a journalist and author. He wrote Empire Land, which is a huge bestseller, and has now released Empire World. Trigger warning, in this episode we discussed racism, racial genocide, sexual assault, rape and graphic imagery.

Thank you so much for being here. My pleasure. I love this part of London. It's a great part of London. I've broken the Fourth Wall by mentioning it. No, no. If we were based in a different part of London, London, you'd have said, no, thank you. Thank you to the book podcast.

Basically, yes. So we had quite a unique situation with you because we wanted to talk about a novel that was sort of set in colonial history. Touched on themes of empire. Themes of Empire. Because you obviously wrote the brilliant Empire Land and now you have the amazing Empire World, which has just come out. So yeah, we wanted a kind of empire novel.

We thought there'd be like an interesting crossover maybe. And so you selected this book, which Carri Aden and I, I would not have picked up. No one would have because everyone's forgotten it. I've totally forgot. Funny enough, when I bought it, I was like, oh, that one. And my husband said, oh, God, yeah, that's the book that, like, stopped me reading because I just couldn't get through it, like, in the year 2000.

Well, I have to admit that I gave this book to a charity shop, many, many years of her. And then was really surprised. The other book I did this with was Catch 22, where I read 20 pages, thought it's not for me. My favorite book of all time. And then you reread it, and it's the funny. and I just thought what was wrong with me. And I've had a very similar thing with this. Yes, I agree.

What was my problem? This is a romp. Yeah, I know. It's a page turn. Why did you choose it? What was it that? Well, I'm always complaining when I'm talking about empire, about how we have amnesia in this country, about how there's not much art on empire.

British Empire is the biggest thing we ever did as a nation. One of the biggest things that ever happened in the history of the world, because empire and human history. And yet not a huge amount of films on it. No, not many books. You know, we tend to concentrate. on like, you know, the Tudors, Queen Victoria, World War I, World War II, endlessly. That is British history. You've summed it up there. Basically, that is it?

And what about British Empire? And I'm always complaining about it. And actually, I only read this book six months ago. Someone put it in my hand and said, this is the most fascinating book you could read on Empire. And it's about an episode of history. I write about an Empire Land. Yeah, I thought that's why you had chosen it because of Empire Land.

I just picked it up. And I think it's absolutely fucking incredible. Yeah. It's so funny. It's a, somehow a funny, profound book about genocide. Yeah. How is that possible? And yeah, to do that, do with that lightning.

It's very interesting what you say about the absence of art about empire because Carriad, she wrote her dissertation about how. The absence of art about empire, yeah. Oh, wow. The British film industry, the reason it doesn't flourish is because it. Is this it? I can say the dissertation if you'd like. I don't paraphrase your.

I did. We both read... Let's have the full title, yes. Well, I can't remember the full title. Basically, it was like the reason there isn't a British film industry is we haven't dealt with our past. And the reason that European cinema, particularly German cinema, exists and has a very distinct style and lots of famous people like Vinner's. Because they've dealt with their history. Precisely.

Wow. I wish you, I read your dissident. My, I wish my tutors have been so abused. Well, next episode, come back. And we'll discuss carry. Because I compare wings of desire, wings of desire, which is all about Berlin. and the history of Berlin and it sees angels walking around

and it deals with it a bit like this in a very sideways view of what's happened. It's not like a shinderslist film where it's really telling you a story it's looking at Berlin in the 90s and what's left and going why does our city look like this?

And I point out that all British films are merchant ivory and beautiful, lovely blonde-haired white ladies in white linen walking around fanning themselves and there's nothing that deals with empire so you grow up knowing nothing about it You don't understand it.

And then it's very hard for a film industry to have a culture if you're not acknowledging the culture. Yeah, I guess we're not talking about indie films before everyone complains. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But we're talking about mainstream films. Yeah, you're totally right. And why is that? Art is about the uncomfortable truths of being a human being.

And we're so uncomfortable. It's a taboo. Yeah, it's taboo. And like you've written in all your work. Like if it's not at the basic level of education, if it's not something you encounter from like primary school onwards, then how can it be in your bones to understand, why it exists and why I talk about, whereas like the Roman Empire,

we all understand what that means, what the Romans were, we understand the jokes about Romans. It's quite not films about it too. There's a lot of films about it. And it's something you can understand, digest. It's basically unprocessed history. Yeah, and the Germans are really good at it. I talk about this in Empire and I guess.

The Germans systematically go over the most painful things that ever happened to them. And all of their films do. And I can't walk around without being reminded, this happened here. This happened to this family here. I'm also obsessed with the... Empire podcast, shout out with William Derrimple and Anita Arndt. And I heard you on there saying one of the reasons, like the difference is that one, Germany, in verticomers, loses, and because Britain was never invaded, which for me, I was like, wish I put that in my dissertation.

That's a great point. Like, we don't have those physical, it's not in our country. History is over there. History always happened elsewhere. History haven't over five there. Even the things I hear because of empire, we don't think about tea. Yeah. Yeah. Rum. All these things that exist, sugar, street names. We just don't think about it, do we? I think we get uncomfortable. I think that little seesaw, and I know that you encounter the worst kind of people on this,

but who want to be proud, like, rule Britannia about it. Any information undermines that, any information, so they can't be any. Because you don't get it early on. Like, if you had it early on, like, you know, you do with him with the eighth, and that kind of thing, you'd be like, oh, I get it. Like, he was, you know, he was a very successful king boy, so bad to his wife. Okay, I've got that. Yeah, and two things can be true at the same time.

Yeah, like, okay, he did lots of work. Yeah, spitting from the church, spitting from the Pope, you know, had effects, positive and negative. Yeah. We don't have to go, don't you dare say anything about the Church of England? And that's my conclusion in empire. Opposite things can be true at the same time. And you get it with our discussion of slavery in this country. You mentioned slavery.

People are, but what about abolition? We got rid of it. Both things happened. Yes. We both sent 3 million Africans across the Atlantic and exploited them and created permanent disadvantage in the Caribbean, and we banned slavery and went around the world, making sure other countries also banned it.

Both things can be true. I was so, because I absolutely had no idea, but the idea that with the empire, we instituted homophobic laws in countries where we now would protest, like, oh, you know that it's illegal to be gay there. That's the most British thing I've heard of it, isn't it? It's just like, oh, yeah, don't do that. Okay, maybe you can do that.

It's just whatever we decide is fine. Whatever at the time questions power. That's why I think your book is so fascinating because there was so much that I didn't know and it's so interesting to me. You don't have to have an emotional reaction but you do have to have the information. Yeah, it's just facts, isn't it?

There's so much stuff in the news at the moment where you go, oh my God, it's because of empire and no one's mentioning it like Yemen. Yeah. Yeah. We had a base in Aden. Oh my God. And did some terrible things then.

Palestine, guess what? We helped to create that. There's a war about to take off in Guyana because of the borders we drew up during the Empire there. The Empire podcast starts at the British East India company, goes through the history of India. And then they just did, I've just finished the Ottomans. And literally, as a British person, listen to it, every time they hit something, you're like, oh, it was us, wasn't it? What happened now? And they've got an episode about the creation of Israel, Sykes-Pico,

and they're literally describing men in the office in Westminster with crayons and a map drawing a line. And they need to at one point, it's like, sorry, no, it wasn't just that. And a story is like, yeah, Sykes-Pic, they just had some crayons and a line and a map. And people who'd never been there going, well, that will be that. That's their country. And that's their country. And everyone going, done.

Yeah. Brilliant. You don't think about it. Why are the lines so straight in Africa? Yes. Because somebody drew them with a line. He wasn't in Africa. Yeah.

But also my favourite story on that front is like Nigeria, the name Nigeria. Yes. Yes. A Times leader writer came up with it. Yeah. It was like, oh, maybe we should call this area in Nigeria. Yeah. And he happened. Yeah.

Shocking. To go back to English passengers, I really didn't know anything about Tasmania or Van Diemen's Land, as it was called at the time. And I obviously knew the history of like, as in British convicts were taken to Australia. The cemetery here is quite beautiful. So Carriad and I met in a... Hamilton production of our country's good, which is a play by Timberlake, Wurtenbeaker, by the First Fleet.

And so it's a play that is about, so on the First Fleet, you know, convicts, who most of them done very, very little and were impoverished, got to Australia and a captain, and this is true, tried to put on a play with them because he thought that if he could teach them to speak properly

and respect themselves, then they'd be more civilised, basically, the convicts, yeah. They would be become, better human beings. And, you know, drama's actually a very good tool for empathy in general. He would have got arts council funding, is what I'm saying. It's a great idea. But the play also has an indigenous character sort of responding who talks about, you know, dream time and thinking that they're ghosts, you know, and that's the thing with the first fleet. They thought they were ghost ships full of ghost people and had no idea how awful things were

going to become. So that's where we met. Yeah. Oh, wow. So this is, I can see this is relevant. This is old territory for us. Yeah. Yeah. We nicknamed it, our country's bad, because it was not the best production. But English passengers, so this idea of Tasmania and the indigenous people of Tasmania who were essentially completely wiped out. Completely. Because I think when you think of Australia, you know that there are still indigenous people there and you know it was obviously terrible. But for me to understand, oh, they completely wiped a complete island out of people. Yeah. Yeah, I should explain some of the history. I mean, some thing is there is a revival of Tasmanian indigenous culture. Yes. Because not everyone was wiped out.

those interracial relationships and so on. Basically, when you talk about Bichemba, people often say, well, you know, it wasn't that bad. We didn't have like a genocide. And you're like, actually, we had a genocide. And not only that genocide was used to legally define genocides when the international law was made. Like 4 to 8,000 people were completely wiped out. They were hunted for sport, for pleasure, wiped out by disease, raped, used as target practice. There's one image that I just can't get in my head is that one settler,

decapitated a Tasmanian indigenous person and made the wife wear their head as a necklace. Oh my God. And not only that, they were used as racial exhibits, which this book picks up on. Yes. They were seen as examples, illustrations of new fangled racial theories,

and they were seen as the lowest of the low. And not only were they wiped out, their bodies and their skeletons were then put on display. There was one on display until 1947. I was looking up before I came here. And a museum in Britain somewhere only just gave back one of the last survivors like necklace and bracelet. And even more shocking is that now in this new culture war we have an empire with right wingers defending empire, we now have Tasmanian genocide denial.

You've got self-proclaimed historians, not going to mention them, sell their books, claiming that actually the Brits didn't do that much bad stuff. It all happened kind of naturally because of a disease. The consensus among the X was absolutely was a deliberate genocide. But the line, the idea of this line, that happens in this book and of literally deciding we're going to walk, all these farmers are going to walk a line and chase them into a corner over an island. Like they have evidence of that.

That happened. It happened and the last few were sent off to this tiny little island. Yeah, that was awful. And also we have proof of the thinking beforehand, which underlies it all, which is, as you say, is the idea on race. Yeah, yeah. And that they're being sort of races that were like a cul-de-sack and evolution or, as you say, lower, literally less, feeling less, thinking less.

Yeah, they defined it as inferior, didn't it? Which is why they were so interested in the skeletons and digging it, because they didn't consider them human. I mean, that's why genocide happens. It's one race deciding you are not human, we can do what we like to you. Yeah, and this is another thing British people really struggle with, the idea that British Empire was proudly racist. Yeah, yeah.

And I say in my new book that British Empire is probably the most influential instigator and propagator right supremacy in the history of the world. We were. We find it struggled with that because I think, World War II, we took on the evil racist Germans. America seems to be much worse about race than us. What's very interesting is that, you know, the Germans didn't invent genocide. They took these genocide.

They didn't even invent concentration camps. We did. Racial science had a very British flavour. Yeah. It was developed largely in Britain. It then went off to America and Germany where it developed its own dark flavors. But we created a lot of racial science. We got very excited about Darwin.

Darwin himself. wasn't into all this. But his theories were hijacked and you've got one of the characters in the book who just takes it seemingly to extreme degrees but actually it's pretty much based on a real scientist who did that. But honestly, if you're like me

and you have to go around talking on the media about how British Empire was racist, people don't want to hear that. The book is told from all these different points of view. 20 is it? 20% of what we hear from? It should fail because 20 different characters all of them writing in a different form,

it should fail, but it doesn't. Some come back more than others. When I read the description of how, you know, Victorian language, Dickensian language, English. Manx, there's all these Isle of Man characters speaking in Manx dialects. So before I started it, I was like, oh no. We were annoyed. When we picked up, we were like, what is that?

Way up, governor, do, do. And actually, it all feels like authentic people talking to you. You really feel like you're getting almost diary. almost one character you are getting his journal notes aren't you also it's very very very funny yeah the manseman what's his name ilium quilliam cooley the best name he's so funny he's so funny yeah i love that took me so long i kept rereading his name being like it's not william it's ilium i need to get my head around this so actually we should describe maybe what happens in the book basically it describes a hapless journey in eighteen fifty seven from england to tasmania yeah

and there's different people on the boat there for different reasons the manxman ilium quillium Culey is basically trying to escape the taxman, right? Yeah. He was only trying to get to France, but then he got in trouble, and so now he's have to agree to take some mad English people to Tasmania, basically. He hates the English. He hates them. And you've got this very annoying clergyman Wilson, a pompous pratt.

He wants to go to Tasmania to prove that the Garden of Eden exists, and thereby prove Darwinism wrong. There's a doctor, Dr. Potter, who's developing these weird but very common theories on race, on which races are better than others. And Potter and Wilson argue all the time. You've got Timothy Renshaw, a young botanist, who's sent on the trip by his dad to kind of build his character, doesn't really want to be there.

And then you've got Peeve, who's the indigenous Tasmanian, the child of a Tasmanian and a kind of settler, basically a rapist. And that's the extraordinary thing about this book because the hardest thing about reviving this history is that the colonized don't have a voice often. Yeah, yeah.

They didn't leave documents. They enslaved. We just don't have the documentation of how they felt. But Matthew Neal, who turns out when I looked on Wikipedia, is an amazing linguist, recreates this entire language, which is actually very accessible for us. Yeah, yeah. Of how this kid might have talked. And it's amazing, and it's funny.

And the character of PIVA, because initially when I started, I was like, oh, this is a white man writing an indigenous? Is this going to feel like suddenly uncomfortable? But I didn't find it uncomfortable because I think it's. such a well-rounded character. Like all of them have a very distinct way of speaking in a way that you don't, you know, as soon as you read their chapter, you don't need to, you can instantly tell who's talking to you.

And Peevei's version of events is so heartbreaking and so sad. And I think what is good about this in terms of understanding empire is the characters are not, it's not binary, it's not this man's evil, P-Vey-Vey is, you know, a wonderful indigenous person. You see, like you said, that the Reverend Jeffrey Wilson thinks he does. genuinely thinks he's doing good. The boat is called sincerity. Yeah.

And that is the biggest flag of these people thought they were doing good or some people thought they were doing good. These aren't stories of evil people setting out to do evil. No. That's what history never is. That's the thing. You are helping. Yeah.

This is what the empire was for a lot of people, the civilising mission. Yeah. Spreading Christianity, anti-slavery, British values, which went on into the 20th century, probably goes on now. Yeah. And the way they keep talking about how they're trying to help the Aboriginal. Tasmanians and how they won't wear the clothes and they won't go to church and they won't learn the Psalms. The complete lack of any thought of what someone else might think of you,

someone who is not white in English might have an opinion. Infantilising other adults. Oh, it's just heartbreaking. And then wondering why they aren't grateful. Or like, I love there's content description about the clothes they try and give them. And Peevei always being like, these clothes are so stupid and they just let them rip. And then, you know, Wilson and being so annoyed. We've given them how ungrateful. We gave them clothes and not even wearing them for, taking care of them. So my dad lives in Australia.

My husband is a Greek Australian. There's still massive issues in Australia with white Europeans and people who were born in Australia and then the First Nations. So then this is a horrible example of that. Essentially a musician who gets funding to go to Alice Springs and take instruments and teach First Nation children.

And then they started locking up the instruments when they left because they didn't think they were being treated properly. So like the saxophones and stuff, they can only play them. When the white person is there to say, you can play them. When the white person is there and making sure they play them properly. Wow. And the mixture of emotions, and again, as we're talking about, you know, two things being true at once. They think they're giving this amazing gift of jazz.

The gift of jazz. You know what these people really need. I mean, look, we've given them so much and we've taken so much, but we haven't given back jazz. And charity in general, actually, I think that's why, I mean, I think that's one of the most mind-blowing for me to read and probably for lots of people to read about the origin of lots of British charities. Yes, your chapter on Save the Children and Empire World I was like, oh, I was really shocked to discover that stuff.

Yeah, again, it makes perfect sense. Yeah, it makes perfect sense. It makes perfect sense. And like, you say in Empire World, like, how many charities England has? How many NGOs? Like, international charities. High amount. And you're like...

Direct legacy of Empire. Yeah. And then when you said that, I was like, oh, that makes so much sense. The same people, setting them up after, you know. Yeah. Other things being shut down. It went straight and for empire to running charities. Yeah, I mean, Save the Children is just one example.

But, I mean, their 1931 Save an African child conference where they invited almost no Africans. And that man stood up and argued with them. One black person was there, black American. And he was dragged off stage for telling the truth, which is that you're already there to make money out of black people. And he's dragged off stage. But the shocking thing is how there was a similar African conference in our time in the modern day. And equally, there weren't many Africans there. because of the visa issues.

So it continues. But this is the thing as a nation, we go around and, you know, offering our expertise, talking about charity in human rights and democracy. We need to reflect upon our really dodgy records

on all these things during the British Empire. Talking of dodgy records, literally the live aid song. Oh, the live aid that you talk about in the empire world. Which is so funny. And again, it's funny because it's not funny,

but the language of the live aid song that all of us, it still gets played every Christmas saying, Every Christmas. Saying no snow in Africa. Like Africa is one place. And as you point out,

Kilimanjaro has snow 365 days a year. But this is where I feel slightly bad for having written my chapter on charities in Empire World. Because no sector beats itself more than charities. They've done this work. They've been worrying about this stuff for decades. And, you know, my favourite story is about Save the Children is that they commissioned Ken Loach to do a documentary on Save the Children. And guess what?

He made something damning. Too much. And then they suppressed the film for decades. That was incredible. But now, recently, they've released it, and not only that, all the criticism is on the website. And I think charities are very on it with decolonisation. Yes.

There was a Twitter account for charity so white. Did you follow that? Yes, I do, yes. Because it is a painful process of improving and learning and getting better. And the trouble is, actually, and again, I will conclude myself in this. When you think of yourself as one of the good guys in inverted commas, it's really hard to be criticized because you're like, me, there's murderers out there

and actually you do have to sort of absorb even the fact that it hurts because you have to understand that that's what other people are doing. Absolutely, yeah. What you do in Empire World and Matthew Neal does this as well and I'm not saying that things can't be educational and dry because they can and still be important,

but Empire World is really entertaining at the same time as talking about those things. Yeah, and I think sometimes, and I include, myself in this. You know you should know something and you should find out more about it but you go oh I think I'll feel like I'm being told off or I'll feel bad about things I can't really help with or academics write really inaccessibly. Yeah. Everywhere. I mean I spent two years reading a lot of academics. Some historians write beautifully but lots of them don't. Don't. Yeah. Yeah. They're trying to do you know they're trying to stick to the facts. Well they're talking to other

academics so they need to write a certain way but I do think what you've done with Empire Land and Empire World is reduce it to a way that is like I'm talking about something that you can teach. and rum and save the children things that are tangible in a world rather than like in 1875 it is easy to switch off to that because it does seem again if it's not in your what's the word like your nutrition as a child it's hard to grasp what that means

whereas if you say oh a factory in Victorian England we all know exactly what that means so someone's trying to tell us a story about that it's easy for us to access that because we don't get a lot of that when we're growing up or now even now in you know modern dialogue it's hard to go oh okay yeah, Nigeria, 875, what was happening.

I can't get my head around it. And this is the thing about, I think, English passengers in that, you know, because it won the 2000 Whitbury Book of the Year. It was a Booker finalist, lost out to the Blind Assassin by Margaret. Atwood. I googled that on the way here to find out who won it that year, because you'd never be at-word. I think this, if it was submitted this year, would win the Booker Prize.

Yes, I agree with you. I think it came early. It was way ahead of his time. Way ahead. Now there's sudden interest in, oh my God, we need to give voices to the voiceless and colonialism. And this book is so prophetic. And people need to read it again. There were incidences in the beginning where I thought it's interesting that we can only hear about this from a male character.

Yeah, yeah. Peeve's description of what happened to his mother means we are one stage removed. Because I was imagining for an author, if he was to write it from her point, of view. And she's real. She's based on a real character, the woman, his mother. Yeah. But then suddenly the book is not quite such a yarn.

Yeah. This is my problem with culture, at the risk of sounding a bit like The Daily Mail. My problem with the cultural appropriation. I think all culture is appropriation. I think writers have to get into the imaginations of cultures they're not from. And it's absolutely necessary because when a culture is being wiped out, well, obviously, it's been revived in some ways in Tasmania. you need people to access.

Obviously it's not perfect, but I'd rather have imperfect this kind of version of it than nothing at all, which is what we've got. I think also what this book is doing, if he was only writing the Indigenous Tasmanian story, I would be like, oh, maybe there's other people here. But because he is writing a very British side of it as well,

and including PVA and their argument, I do think that you said it's perfectly imperfect, that it would be mad for him to only tell the Aboriginal side what he can do and has access. as to is tell why these men turned up. But I had the same thought there's only one chapter by a woman. And I did think,

I thought there was not going to be any. I thought, oh, it's a decision. It's listening to me male voices. No, there is one woman who pops up, who is kind of hideous. Yeah, that might be one way in which the book is sadly aged. Yeah. That probably wouldn't happen now.

And when I was researching as well, when I found out basically what happened to Peeve's mother, she was a real, she was considered one of the last Tasmanian Aborigines, and she did get guns and get a rebel alliance together. Yeah. And then was, you know, defeated and put on an island and died and was stuck there. And the bones think that's what happened to her. So I was like, oh, it's interesting that, that obviously Matthew Neal had research and had based that on someone, but we don't hear.

But then I was like, God, is her story, would it just be a howl? Whereas Peeve gives you such a different, it's a good storytelling, right? And his emotional response to it. Because he also doesn't know, he doesn't understand, he doesn't know, he's from a white, his dad is a white settler until he's older. So you're dealing with this, which is the legacy of the Tasmanian. indigenous people. There's a book called, I think it's called Woman in Berlin. I thought of it a lot actually when you were talking in Empire World about how historians who researched certain parts of history are traumatised by the amount of horrific things human beings to do to human beings. So

it's the diary of a journalist who published it anonymously but it was what happened to the women, the German women, especially young women when the Russian soldiers came through and it's just a barrage of sexual assault and hiding and you couldn't put that in as a chapter in like a 20 voice there are some things that once you've heard that point of view it has to carry on reverberating you can't then go and then what's the vicar up to

well it's a difference between fiction and historical fact isn't it it's like he is telling a story and he is trying and that like you said it's so important to get people to understand empire you can't keep shoving horrible facts at them you have to also that's what this book does so well sit them down and you have to bring them in bring them in

I mean the fact is the Tasmanian genocide is a story of rape yeah I mean sexual assault was a huge part of it well war is usually yeah

but how do you get people to pick up a book yeah it's already a book about genocide yeah but like you said about film right in the beginning

film isn't a form of entertainment which doesn't mean we don't have a huge specter of emotions and we can't feel things and like you say that's why you don't swerve

and sidestep it you make art that makes people feel it. It's the telling of the stories, isn't it? It's like because he's given us PIVA and he's given us the understanding of the consequences of that sexual assault, I think it's not easier to empathise, but it opens up another part of your empathy.

In writing PVEA, you suddenly get this understanding of the consequence of all these actions. And that's actually what we have to focus on is, well, what now? What happens these people now? The legacy of that. How do we deal with that?

So PIVA becomes this absolutely he's everything you know all these other people can go home like they can go back on that boat aren't they they're going back to the Isle of Man and yes they've lost their this and they some of them fall down mountains and all this stuff happens but Pivey is still there

in like you just turned up to my party shout on the floor and left what do I do and that's I thought Pive was such a brilliant character I really really wanted him to be okay so badly knowing he's not I was reading on Wikipedia that Matthew Neal is the grandson

of a Nazi dissident. And I think that shows. Yeah, that's interesting. There's a real kind of moral energy to the book. Do you read the end where the scientist who's into the racial theory is based on a real guy and also how, you know, these racial scientists saw the Tasmanians the lowest of the low. Yeah. But then he publishes a letter written about a Tasmanian, a child from Tasmania who's taken to be educated.

And there's a letter from his teachers basically saying this kid is a brilliant student, thereby proving, again, these racial theories are complete nonsense. Also, it's interesting in a book about empire that's making you think pretty hard things, I thought it was very interesting to place a hopeful letter at the end, that a man at that time didn't agree. A man at that time took that child in, educated him, obviously respected him, thought he was brilliant, but that doesn't take away from the consequences of the actions of the people who had the power that did the things.

It's not a depressing book. No, I don't think it is. Because Dr. Potter meets the best possible ending. Isn't it the most satisfying ending to any book? I was like almost cheering. I was like, yes. But the humour never ever, ever feels flippant. No, no.

It's a deviation from telling the truth. It's just sometimes the truth is funny. Yeah. It's my favourite kind of writing in that it's the characters lead the humour. Matthew Neal's not trying to tell a gag. No, he's not like, you know it would be hilarious. Two guys on a boat, one of them is a vicar. And this is always a sign of a really wonderful work of fiction

that when you're not reading it, the character still feel very alive and with you. It's a kind of parody of those adventure accounts of empire that were really popular in the Victorian age. And you've got that excitement. Despite what's happening. You've got that sense of adventure. Are they going to make it?

Will the boat survive this store? Which makes you want to carry on reading it, which is why these memoirs did so well in the Victorian age. But then you've got the profound irony that you've got a vicar trying to find the Garden of Eden. And actually what he finds is the hell created by the settlers. and British and Peerless. For Neil to add in the detail

because Wilson is this horrific vicar. He's horrible. He's so slimy and awful. But just the absolute, I was laughing my head off at like he really believes his wife is missing him. That storyline when he keeps going, I must send her a letter.

She'll be so worried. But she couldn't wave me off. She'd already gone to her sisters and they had very important business and they actually helped me pack and you're like, I love that kind of, again, that English detail. He's imprisoned with Culee for two months.

God, that was so funny. That's so funny. And Culey's like, the man just won't stop praying. Yeah. You won't even talk to me. He's talking to God all the time. Yeah. And then it turns out, anyway, I don't want to give away.

It turns out. It's actually not even chained. There's also a botanist. Yes, yes. There's a whole chapter on botany in my book. Yes, it was fascinating. That's something I didn't know about. Who did?

Definitely. I did, I didn't as your reader. I only know because of the books that's come out this last year. There was lots of books about, yeah, the kind of imperial nature of gardening and of, I think. The role of Q gardens in particular. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, British Empire was spread.

I mean, one of the ways, profound ways it was spread was through plants. So through Sinchona, which produced quinine, which enabled the colonisation of Africa. Yeah, because before that people would have died in malaria. I love that. There's a stat. Apparently, a European in Mali in the mid-19th century had a 300% chance of annual mortality. I think that meant that you would survive for four months before you died. Wow.

But then quinine is discovered, which means that the Europeans can colonise Africa. My step nan, she got quinine poisoning from too much gin and tonic. Oh, wow. My most surprising discovery in empire world, people often say, oh yeah, I've said this myself. Gin and tonic is a legacy of the empire. People drank it to be protected. It's not true.

Gin and tonic was never taken out in the field because there's not enough tonic in a gin and tonic. It's not enough quinine. But queenine was taken with alcohol, just never gin. Some entrepreneur, I think, came up with the idea of gin and tonic separately. Do you remember those two fat ladies? the cooks. Yeah.

One of them, I think it's Clarissa Dixon, right? So she went to the doctor and she said this story and didn't know that was wrong with her

and he was like, well, it's very strange. You're showing all the signs of quinine poisoning. Yeah. And he was like, but to do that, you'd have to be drinking,

oh my God, like two bottles of gin a day. And she was like, oh, and she was giving her heart murmurs, yeah, because of the man of gin,

because the queenin is ahead of alcohol poisoning. Yeah, it was the quinine affecting her in the tonic because her drink of choice was gin and tonic.

So that's what it causes it. If you have a lot of tonic in it, you can glug it all day. Then you've got rubber. I mean, huge profits made by the British, but also a war starts in Malaya, the Malayan emergency, one of the darkest episodes in British Empire. Then you've got tea, which is a lot to war with China, the loss of the American colonies, the change of the diet in India and the UK,

the creation of modern marketing, the exploitation of labour, which continues in the same places today. So these are all plants. Yeah. And then a lot of our common garden plants, I rode adendrons and azaleas, come from empire. Oh, yeah, yeah. They come from empire.

Yeah. There's such a demand for ferns in Victorian drawing rooms that a lot of forests around the world were trampled. And one of the most bizarre things I discovered writing about this is that this destruction then led to the invention of environmentalism. Again, you point out that in that very colonialist way, when, you know, British people are worried about the environment of animals, we just take another swave of another country's land and go, yeah, this is protected now.

Yeah, you were talking like national parks, which were you've grown up with like, oh, that's good, they've got a national park, but you can't hunt things. And you're like, yeah, and then the people who live there can't live and manage it. And it's not else to take. And you're like, oh, yeah, but it's such a. Yeah, I think a national park summarises how you cannot talk about empire and a simplistic way. So the British Empire and imperialists created natural parks seems like a good thing, protecting plants and animals. Actually, they are created often by hunters who would destroy the animals in the first place

and then when they were created, the indigenous people there weren't allowed to hunt although they were blamed for the problems and then they weren't allowed to, nowadays they're not allowed to live there so that's a form of colonialism. And the thing with indigenous people, that kind of hunting is only if a survival hunting, they're not going to wipe out a species

because then they've got nothing to eat. But also they managed the land. The other thing really about what happened in Tasmania and the way they used to burn the land and maintain it. They knew how to work that. And then we come along and we don't know how to work it. In the same way that we put the clothes on them and go, well, that should fit you.

Well, our farming should fit you. It's so arrogant. Now we lecture the world and environmentalism. I know. And we destroyed large ways of the world. It's so embarrassing to be British. But can we not reflect on the fact that we destroyed 60% on New Zealand forest. That the tea plantations in Sri Lanka now have landslides because we took away the natural plants.

It would help our case if we just acknowledge the history. I guess that's the only argument I'm making I don't think we should beat ourselves up about it too much but can we just talk about it? For me it's the royal family and animals I had no idea that he bloody shot that Prince Philip shot a tiger I think in 19661

And it wasn't put on the news The BBC protected him because they knew what a huge effect That would have I'm so furious about it It's too much to be furious with them Like Prince William Duke of Edinburgh God bless him You know Prince Charles King Charles

They all talk about animals in the environment a lot their family involved a huge amount of hunting. Read spare and one of the arguments that William and Harry get into is who gets Africa, as in who is in charge of publicly speaking about like doing good work there. Africa, like it's one place and that's what is said in spare. William gets pissed off with Harry because he starts encroaching and Africa and environment is his. That's what he talked about publicly. And that for me, again, that mindset is like, we have to unpick that mindset.

It's not yours. Also, can we have a look around your houses, guys? It's quite a lot of ivory. What you say? You sort of say that they sort of put it all away in the Buckingham Palace. We all go to these stately homes to admire the mahogany. We almost made a mahogany forest extinct because of all the mahogany furniture we've made, which now we coup over in National Trust houses.

Again, it's very hard when you've been fed a narrative your whole life. And then when you start looking, you realise that narrative isn't true. Like, there is a moment of anger and shock and denial. Like, I know I don't want it to be true. But to understand that there. narrative has been fed by lots of different institutions and sorry to go on about the Ottomans. But there was a big thing about that Henry VIII and they were very enthralled to the Ottoman court and they were like lots of people dressing in Ottoman attire in his paintings and they're not on display

at Hampton Court because we don't want to see Henry the Eight dress as an Ottoman. We want to see him in the outfits we know him painted by the painters that we know. And that just small thing is like those tiny details of someone curating the experience that you get is how we get to the idea that Henry Eighth is great British king and we were really important. And you know that the Ottomans were like, oh yeah, there's some English people over there, but they're not that interesting to us. There were black people in Henry Eighth's course. If someone had mentioned that, I might have been able to see myself in the history lessons.

Yeah. Also, if someone had mentioned the millions of Asians and Indians who died in World War I and World War II, that might have made the two years of teaching and all the Rememonst Day services more interesting to us, a racially diverse audience, not once. was it mentioned. And then we had when I was at school, Bernard Manny

appearing on Mrs. Merton's show saying there weren't any Pachies at Dunkirk and it's like, well, you're correct in that Pakistan didn't exist. But there were Indians at Dunkirk.

But that's the level of the of the amnesia that can happen on BPC too. But that happened very recently with the... On the Bloody Fox. Yeah. He was shocked that there's a Sikh. Yeah.

Guess what? Quite a few Sikhs were involved in World War I and two. And he said that isn't true, and it was like, I love it when uneducated people. Bigots, uneducated bigots want to argue with people who've done a lot of research. Yeah. Yeah. It's, but unfortunately, I don't know.

I don't feel like it changed. You know, his platform is built on just saying the thing that he's inflammatory. He's like Donald Trump. His whole career's built on a lie. So we all recommend English passengers, I'd say. Oh, gosh. Isn't it great? I'm so glad you liked it. Yeah, I loved it.

I really hope there's a film producer listening. I'm amazing film. It should be a television show. I could see Cumberbatch. as Wilson. Oh yeah, God, he'd be very good as well, I really enjoyed it. And Empire World as well.

Well, I'm saying, they're very, very good companion pieces. Like lots of people, I want to be having more conversations about this and my lack of information stops me. So I read a book by Empire World and I feel like I can say to someone, do you know about Queenie?

I do think it helps to be, to just think if there's a problem in the world, it probably started with Britain being there. I approach all problems now. Where were we? I'm just like, the moment I hear something, where was Britain, what did we do? Like a mum with a bad kid.

Tell me what happened. I've got it, I know. It was definitely our fault. Some point in line. When did we push them? We gave them cricket, though. And football, 60% of the nations who play football is because of British Empire.

I'd like to apologise for both those things. Yeah, so two things I could be less interested in. Empire World is out now. As is Empire Land, the first. book, which is equally brilliant, and English passengers is very much available since the year 2000. Yeah, I hope they bring out a new print of it. Yeah. I hope it comes to movie anyway. Yeah, because of this. Go out and read it. Thank you so much. Thank you. Oh, thanks for having me on. Thank you for listening to the Weirdo's Book Club. Empire World is out now. My novel,

Weirdo and Carriads book, You Are Not Alone, are both available now. And I have a live event for Weirdo at the South Bank Centre in London and tickets are on sale now. Check out our Instagram at Sarah and Carriads Weirdo's Book Club for the upcoming books for going to be discussing. Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you.