A Forgotten History
by David Olusoga
Recommended by Richard Coles
Check price on AmazonProof-backed recommendation
Amazon availability
Black and British traces centuries of Black presence in Britain using genetic research, archival records, and contemporary interviews. Its value is in joining family-level episodes to big national shifts so local stories illuminate imperial and industrial history. Vivid narrative patches and clear syntheses sit beside long, detail-heavy chapters on commerce, law and archives that slow the book’s momentum. Best read when you want documentary context and connective history rather than a breezy memoir.
This summary and audience guidance are AI-generated from the book's description and its recommendation history, last updated May 2026. Recommendations, quotes and sources elsewhere on this page come from published material and are not generated.
Drawing on new genetic and genealogical research, original records, expert testimony and contemporary interviews, Black and British reaches back to Roman Britain, the medieval imagination and Shakespeare's Othello. It reveals that behind the South Sea Bubble was Britain's global slavetrading empire and that much of the great industrial boom of the...
Difficulty:hard
Check formats, pricing, and availability options for Kindle, physical print, or audiobooks directly.
View available editions on AmazonWhy recommended
Recommended by 1 source and appears in History and Nonfiction.
People and public figures who have recommended this book.
Recommendation proof is sourced from public posts, interviews, reading lists, and cited references.
Richard Coles
“The book of the year for me (though I was late to the party) was “Black and British” by @DavidOlusoga. I can’t remember when a book last made such an impression on me. It made me see the world differently and has changed my life.”
Check formats, pricing, and availability options directly on Amazon.
Consider Accidental Presidents by Jared Cohen. Recommended by 10 sources.
“Accidental Presidents offers eight narrative portraits of men who succeeded to the U.S. presidency without election, using anecdote-rich scenes and readable context to show how personality and circumstance interact with office power. It’s strongest as a set of self-contained stories that make succession stakes concrete for non-specialist readers; it does not prioritize dense archival argument or exhaustive methodology, so expect some interpretive generalizations and repeated themes across cases. Use it for fast historical orientation rather than scholarly deep-dives.”
Each recommendation is collected from a public source — interviews, articles, or curated lists — and linked to its original URL. Books with many verifiable recommendations from respected people rank higher.
