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Sathnam Sanghera

Born

Wolverhampton, West Midlands, England

Website

http://www.sathnam.com

Twitter

Sathnam

Genre

Journalism, Fiction, Nonfiction

Influences

Arnold Bennet ...more

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Sathnam Sanghera was born to Punjabi parents in the West Midlands in 1976, attended Wolverhampton Grammar School and graduated from Christ’s College, Cambridge with a first class degree in English Language and Literature in 1998. Before becoming a writer he (among other things) worked at a burger chain, a hospital laundry, a market research firm, a sewing factory and a literacy project in New York.

Between 1998 and 2006 he was at The Financial Times, where he worked (variously) as a news reporter in the UK and the US, specialised in writing about the media industries, worked across the paper as Chief Feature Writer, and wrote an award-winning weekly business column. Sathnam joined The Times as a columnist and feature writer in 2007, reviews Sathnam Sanghera was born to Punjabi parents in the West Midlands in 1976, attended Wolverhampton Grammar School and graduated from Christ’s College, Cambridge with a first class degree in English Language and Literature in 1998. Before becoming a writer he (among other things) worked at a burger chain, a hospital laundry, a market research firm, a sewing factory and a literacy project in New York.

Between 1998 and 2006 he was at The Financial Times, where he worked (variously) as a news reporter in the UK and the US, specialised in writing about the media industries, worked across the paper as Chief Feature Writer, and wrote an award-winning weekly business column. Sathnam joined The Times as a columnist and feature writer in 2007, reviews cars for Management Today and has presented a number of radio documentaries for the BBC.

Sathnam’s first book, The Boy With The Topknot: A Memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies in Wolverhampton, was shortlisted for the 2008 Costa Biography Award, the 2009 PEN/Ackerley Prize and named 2009 Mind Book of the Year. His novel, Marriage Material, has been shortlisted for a 2014 South Bank Sky Arts Award and a 2013 Costa Book Award, been longlisted for the 2014 Desmond Elliot Prize, picked by The Sunday Times, The Observer and Metro as one of the novels of 2013, and is being developed as a multi-part TV drama by Kudos.

He has won numerous prizes for his journalism, including Article of the Year in the 2005 Management Today Writing Awards, Newspaper Feature of the Year in the 2005 Workworld Media Awards, HR Journalist of the Year in the 2006 and 2009 Watson Wyatt Awards for Excellence and the accolade of Young Journalist of the Year at the British Press Awards in 2002.

He was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters for services to journalism by The University of Wolverhampton in September 2009 and a President’s Medal by the Royal College of Psychiatrists in 2010, while GQ Magazine named him as one of “The Men of Next 25 years” in 2013, with writer Jonathan Coe saying that “whether he’s writing autobiography or fiction, Sathnam is busy carving out his own literary niche – in the multicultural British Midlands – which he explores with incredible grace, generosity and humour”.

The Boy With The Topknot, was originally published by Penguin in hardback as If You Don’t Know Me By Now. He is trustee and board chair for Creative Access, a charity which helps find internships in the creative industries for talented young people from under-represented backgrounds. He lives in London. ...more

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Sathnam Sanghera’s books

Average rating: 4.02 · 6,608 ratings · 764 reviews · 14 distinct works • Similar authors

	The Boy with the Topknot: A Memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies in Wolverhampton 4.05 avg rating — 2,717 ratings — published 2008 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Marriage Material 3.71 avg rating — 1,104 ratings — published 2013 — 19 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Empireworld: How British Imperialism Has Shaped the Globe 3.98 avg rating — 1,027 ratings — published 2024 — 10 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Stolen History: The Truth About the British Empire and How It Shaped Us 4.41 avg rating — 223 ratings — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Empireland / Stolen History / The Boy with the Topknot 3.98 avg rating — 46 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain / Empireworld: How British Imperialism Has Shaped the Globe 4.47 avg rating — 15 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Journeys of Empire: British voyages that changed the world forever – and the rebels who resisted it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Journeys of Empire it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Boy with the Topknot by Sathnam Sanghera, Assad Zaman (narrator), W.F. Howes Ltd. (publisher) really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 1 rating	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Tonight the Music Seems So Loud: The Meaning of George Michael 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Quotes by Sathnam Sanghera (?)

“It is because you have loved me that I know how to love others”
― Sathnam Sanghera, The Boy with the Topknot: A Memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies in Wolverhampton

5 likes

“It is puerile to reduce imperial history to a matter of 'good' and 'bad'; trying to weigh up the positive and negative in this way is like defending the morality of kicking a random old man in the shins one afternoon because you helped an old lady across the road in the morning.”
― Sathnam Sanghera, Empireland: How Imperialism has Shaped Modern Britain

tags: history, imperial, imperialismsm, morality

4 likes

“After the First World War, the man in charge of recruitment at the Colonial Office was Major Ralph Dolignon Furse, a decorated war hero, a keen rugby and cricket player and, crucially, holder of a poor third-class degree from Oxford. Furse's selection process was designed to eliminate anyone too smart: dependability was the thing most desired. The last thing anyone wanted was for men in the field to analyse what they were doing.”
― Sathnam Sanghera, Empireland: How Imperialism has Shaped Modern Britain

tags: anti-intellectualism, british-empire, colonial-office, ralph-dolignon-furse

1 likes

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Polls

Vote for the March / April 2025 BotMs

The top two vote recipients will become the Books of the Month for the period in question. Please vote for a book only if you can access it in time, and plan to contribute to the discussion.

The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore
by Evan Friss

10 votes, 21.3%

The Crusades Through Arab Eyes
by Amin Maalouf

10 votes, 21.3%

The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook
by Hampton Sides

7 votes, 14.9%

Empireworld: How British Imperialism Shaped the Globe
by Sathnam Sanghera

5 votes, 10.6%

The Cloud Forest: A Chronicle of the South American Wilderness
by Peter Matthiessen

5 votes, 10.6%

Superlative: The Biology of Extremes
by Matthew D. LaPlante

5 votes, 10.6%

The Boys of Riverside: A Deaf Football Team and a Quest for Glory
by Thomas Fuller

5 votes, 10.6%

47 total votes

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