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.

David Olusoga

Our national history cannot be national if, in the near future, one in three young adults feels their stories remain untold, if this country's long global history of empire and interconnections is marginalised and if the historical reality of race is rendered almost invisible.

David Olusoga

Black history is a series of missing chapters from British history. I'm trying to put those bits back in.

David Olusoga

Because racism is not like jealousy or selfishness, it is not a primal urge or a basic instinct, it is a 400-year-old political and economic system that has infected our institutions, our culture and even our thinking.

David Olusoga

History, after all, is a process, not a position, and it is not best written in bronze and marble. It is complex, plastic and ever-changing; all things that heroic statues are not.

David Olusoga

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.

David Olusoga

The refusal to accept that the black presence in Britain has a long and deep history is not just a symptom of racism, it is a form of racism. It is part of a rearguard and increasingly unsustainable defence of a fantasy monochrome version of British history.

David Olusoga

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.

David Olusoga

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.

David Olusoga

When historians write the last pages of their books, and the producers of history documentaries sit down to edit the final minutes of their programmes, there is often a strong urge to look to the future and emphasise the positive.

David Olusoga

The great untruth around which everything pivots is the idea that the defenders of these statues are the defenders of history and truth; while those who want to see them toppled or contextualised are the Huns at the gate, who would destroy national histories and bring down great men.

David Olusoga

Each year when the A-level results come out, thousands of students and their families settle down to deal with the implications - positive or otherwise - of the fact that their actual grades differ from those they had predicted by their schools.

David Olusoga

The most extreme among the Brexiters are convinced they can ride the chaos and deploy the 'shock doctrine' to remake the nation in their ideological image.

David Olusoga

When the banks crashed the global economy in 2007-08, it was they who received a bailout while the rest of us got austerity.

David Olusoga

Historians are a long way from being key workers. The best place for them is at home, reading their books and keeping out of the way.

David Olusoga

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

David Olusoga

By 1956, London Transport was recruiting in Barbados, even loaning migrants the costs of their passage to Britain. British Rail placed ads in the Barbados Labour Office and the NHS appealed to West Indian women to come to Britain and train to become nurses.

David Olusoga

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

David Olusoga

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?

David Olusoga

The British deployed the men of their Indian army on the European battlefield from October 1914; the decision being made within days of the outbreak of hostilities.

David Olusoga

Humans are pattern-seeking animals, consciously and subconsciously imposing designs and theories on to past events. We do this in both our private lives and when looking at history.

David Olusoga