Abacus One Fine Day Britains Empire on the Brink.

by Matthew Parker

A portrait of the British Empire at both the peak of its global reach and the moment it began to topple
 
September 29, 1923. Once the Palestine Mandate officially takes effect, the British Empire—now covering a quarter of the world’s land and boasting a population of 460 million—is the largest the world has ever seen. But it is also an empire in rapid transition.
 
Nationalist and Pan-African movements are gaining momentum throughout West Africa, thanks as much to Marcus Garvey as to the sustained efforts of local activists and politicians.
 
On far-flung Ocean Island in the Pacific, highly profitable phosphate extraction threatens to render the land uninhabitable for its native population—and colonial officials are torn between their integrity and their careers.
 
And in India, Jawaharlal Nehru and fellow nationalists wonder despairingly about the future of the independence movement as Gandhi languishes in prison.
 
Moving from London to Kuala Lumpur, Australia to the West Indies , One Fine Day is a breathtaking and unflinching tour of the British Empire at its pinnacle. Here the Empire is at its biggest; but it is on a precipice, beset with debts and doubts as liberation movements emerge to undo the colonial era, and see the sun set on the Empire.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, 20th Century, World History, India, Africa, Politics

608 pages, Hardcover

First published September 26, 2023

About the author

I'm the author of a number of books including Monte Cassino, about the Western Allies' hardest battle against Germany in WWII, Panama Fever/Hell's Gorge, the epic story of the building of the Panama Canal, The Sugar Barons, about the rise and fall of the British West Indian sugar empire, Willoughbyland, the story of the forgotten English colony in Suriname, exchanged with the Dutch for New York and Goldeneye, about the influence of Jamaica on Ian Fleming's creation of James Bond. My new book is called One Fine Day: Britain's Empire on the brink. It is a snapshot of one day - 29 September 1923 - when the British Empire reached what would turn out to be its maximum territorial extent. It was the sole global superpower, but it was also an empire beset with debts and doubts.

When not reading, writing or staring out of the window, I love making sushi, pubs, growing stuff and visiting remote places.

I'm a member of the Authors Cricket Club, and wrote a chapter of A Season of English Cricket from Hackney to Hambledon. I am also a contributor to the Oxford Companion to Sweets.

I live in East London with my wife, three children and annoying dog.

Reviews

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 1 out of 5]

It took only the reading of a few chapters for this mediocre history to result in a massive wave of ennui and disaffection to overwhelming me. This is not a bad book, if you have read absolutely nothing about the British overseas exploits anywhere in the world post the American revolution, but if you have even a soupcon of knowledge of Ireland, India and the entire area of South East Asia (a completely meaningless term outside of empire), China, any part of Africa, Egypt and the Middle East then this book is only only going to be annoying, pointless and completely without point. Compared to riveting popular history like Piers Brendon's 'Decline and Fall of the British Empire: 1781-1997' this book is a Brobdingnag monstrosity of pointlessness.

I am being harsh because the book has received such laudatory reviews that a dose of reality is necessary. Despite its title it is not a portrait of the British empire on one day in 1923 nor is it particularly good on the 1923 Imperial Conference. Although it uses the September 29, 1923 and the assumption of the British Mandate over Palestine as the ostensible pivotal moment this examination of the British Empire at its peak it has absolutely nothing to say about Palestine, Egypt or the rest of the Middle East (Iran is not mentioned once). Well you can't cover everything can you? well I would have preferred something on this vital region and rather less on, for example, Sir Hugh Clifford's life from his youth as a cadet in 1883 through to his death in 1941.

But that is the problem with this whirlwind tour of empire at a particular moment, context requires lengthy digressions into past history but these digressions are scattershot and never comprehensive or balanced. This is partially because Mr Parker is not simply writing a history of the British Empire in 1923 he is writing about how the British viewed their empire in 1923.

Unfortunately 1923 was the culmination of twenty odd years of, not Imperial enthusiasm, but of crackpot imperial schemes for everything from 'imperial preference' in trade, to idiotic monumental architectural monstrosities to the glory of Britain's empire that rivalled Etienne-Louis Boulle's in impracticality but not good taste. This era also produced vast, urealisabel and unrealistic schemes to try and tidy up the UK's multifarious empire into a homogeneously governed whole. Which in reality meant easily bent to the needs of the UK. But the hollowness of all these schemes had been revealed in 1922 during the Chanak crisis when the 'White Dominions' refused to back Lloyd's George's absurd campaign to support Greece's attempts to resurrect a never existent Greek empire in Asia Minor.

Empire as anything but a prop to maintaining the UK's status as a world power was always a non starter. This had nothing to do with altruism, only hypocrisy. If Mr. Parker had looked at the history of Ireland between 1800-1922 he would have reported the abundant newspaper praise for Ireland's attendance at the 1923 Imperial Conference with more cynical edge. From the reports you would have thought that Ireland as a 'Dominion' was something Britain had been working for rather than against for over 120 years. What Ireland provided was a blueprint for idiotic British imperial policy everywhere from India to Cypress. Mild requests for change and reform derisively rejected until frustration leads to violence which is promptly labelled terrorism and fought as Britain tries to offer what it previously refused, it is to little to late, violence continues until a complete collapse of Britain's position occurs and a royal is sent in with brass bands and a landau to wash everyone's hands of the mess.

Unfortunately because Mr. Parker's research is almost (I use the qualifier out of politeness not because I really believe it necessary) exclusively from secondary sources (and some are pretty ropey ones , like Edward VIII fictitious if not downright mendacious 'A King's Story') many of them personal accounts which I would have been preferred to have been spared such as the way to copious quotes relating to Lord Delamere and the shower of rich shits in Kenya's 'Happy Valley' (but happy for whom?). I am not surprised that Mr. Parker has kept his references and bibliography in the obscurity of online. If readers could see the paucity behind this long work they might consider it less 'magisterial' (a word used in many reviews).

I have devoted way too much space to this book but it is a warning to anyone who likes good, popular history to avoid the longueurs you will suffer reading this unsatisfactory book.

[Tilly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was really looking forward to reading this and while I enjoyed it, I think the breadth of this book had two effects. I didn’t enjoy as much as previous Matthew Parker books which focused on specific places, in this book just as I got invested then the focus moved. Also the scale of how horrible the British Empire was in so many places is horrendous and relentless

[Mai H.]

Non-fiction November TBR

📱 Thank you to NetGalley and PublicAffairs

[Conner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Would moreso give it a three and a half. The concept of examining the empire through a single day was great, but the day was used as a stoppage point to explain the context up to rather than as a moment in time type thing. Overall, it did an excellent job of expressing how the empire's justification couldn't coexist with its sustained existence.

[Brendan (History Nerds United) · Rating 5 out of 5]

To say that I was excited to see Matthew Parker's new book One Fine Day was available is a massive understatement. One of Parker's previous books The Sugar Barons is a personal favorite and I knew what to expect before jumping in. I expected Parker to write effortlessly and for him to have a keen eye for interesting people and details. Dear reader, I also knew that it's a very long book. I loved it, but you should know it is very long.

The book basically covers the British Empire in 1923 when it is at its zenith. It is also showing massive cracks. The reader gets to spend time in various sections of the empire and watch as the rapid disintegration is beginning. Parker needs to perform a high wire act. Imperialism and colonialism are bad words nowadays and it would be ludicrous to celebrate the very negative impacts of English colonialism. At the same time, to call everyone in the British system evil would be just as great an injustice. Parker handles this perfectly in my opinion. Good acts are called good, bad acts are bad, and the super nice guy in chapter one may end up being a racist opportunist by the end. Parker does not condemn people with today's eyes, but he does point out how history will remember them.

The sheer scale of this book is massive and it does cause some slight issues. For instance, the strongest parts of the book are when Parker focuses on a person or place which is not normally covered in history books. For instance, I finally understand why guano was so important in the Pacific and I will be looking to track down a biography of Adelaide Casely-Hayford forthwith. However, it's the bigger stories which slow down the narrative. Gandhi and India take up a good amount of page count. It feels like too much for this particular book, but also not in depth enough to do the story of Britain and India justice. However, this is a very minor complaint and another reader may think me ridiculous. You are welcome to as you are not the only one.

In conclusion, the book is fantastic and I am already excited for whatever Parker puts out next. Just remember, though, to brew a pot of coffee before you open it. You need your strength for all these pages!

(This book was provided as an advance copy by Netgalley and PublicAffairs.)

[Stephen King · Rating 4 out of 5]

A clever take on the decline of the British empire (which reached its geographical zenith on 29th September 1923). Matthew Parker uses this date to circumvent the globe from the Gilbert and Ellice Islands to Jamaica using contemporary sources, government reports to focus on the key tensions which hastened the imperial decline. The book doesn’t attempt to cover the whole world but digs deeper into the commercial, political and social disputes in the Pacific, Malaysia, Myanmar, India, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Jamaica. The hubris and racism is shocking to the contemporary reader and the overstretched resources of post World War One Britain are glaringly obvious.

[Janalyn, the blind reviewer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book covers a day in September in 1923 and talks about everywhere the Empire rained from Australia it’s taking over all of China the islands they were dismantling for profit despite having 1000 residents and much much more. This book missed nothing and the author covered the good the bad and the ugly of the British empire’s hold and control on all it’s subjects including those who were undereducated such as the resident in malaise and even those who broke the law in this even included the prince’s ex mistress who murdered her husband the richest man in Kenya who fell for a scam they even talked about where DH Lawrence was on his travels in Australia this book is chock-full of many interesting things the hubris of the British government its mistakes there is just a plethora of information in this book and I found it oh so interesting as I am a big lover of British history and so to say this was a great book is an understatement I absolutely enjoyed it and highly recommend it. I haven’t even talked about half of what was in the book and this is all just one day in British history and its territories. They even talked about why the well to do avoided Hyde Park so everything in every country the British ruled over is mentioned in this book and there’s a story attached I absolutely loved it and highly recommend it I want to thank the publisher a NetGalley for my free arc copy please forgive any mistakes as I am blind and dictate my review.

[Steve's Book Stuff · Rating 4 out of 5]

On September 29, 1923, the League of Nations’ Mandate of Palestine became law. The Mandate formally transferred the regions of Palestine and Transjordan to the UK from the Ottoman Empire, which had ceded them at the end of World War I. On that date the British Empire reached its maximum extent. The Empire covered a quarter of the world’s landmass at 14 million square miles of land. It was home to four hundred and sixty million people - a fifth of the world’s population at the time - all subjects of His Majesty King George V.

British historian Matthew Parker has built his book One Fine Day around the state of affairs inside the Empire on that day. While the British had achieved the largest Empire ever known, there were cracks apparent in 1923 that would lead to its eventual dissolution.

The book is a collection of stories about British colonies. Ocean Island in the Pacific, India, Malaya, Burma, Kenya and West Africa are the main focus. As the author’s sights shift to each colony, he provides the history and context leading up to the events of September 1923. The result is a rich and in-depth picture of the Empire at its height, with an amazingly wide range of characters.

The whole point of the Empire was for the colonies to provide resources to (in other words increase the wealth of) the Mother Country. The exploitation of the colonies’ resources and people was baldly excessive. Much of the picture that Parker paints is not pretty. There are some dark, tragic stories covered in this book, like the massacre in Amritsar, India in 1919.

Ocean Island ends up uninhabitable due to the removal of the island’s phosphate stores. Hundreds and thousands of tons of the island itself - the very ground under the natives’ feet - were removed to provide fertilizer for the farm fields of Australia.

The chapters on Kenya casts a dark shadow as well, with systematic exploitation (slavery in all but name) of the local population to work the fields of the Europeans who had taken their land.

Of course, the picture varied from place to place. The Dominions were self-governing, largely white colonies - places like Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In those places in 1923 the people were mostly happy with their lot within the Empire.

In other places where the dominant races were not white, and where the hand of Empire was keeping the local populace working on behalf of their white rulers, there was much discontent. The end of World War I only exacerbated tensions. Returning veterans of the native populations were treated poorly in contrast with their white counterparts.

The social impacts of the end of the Great War were one factor weighing against Empire, but there were others. Economically Britain had not kept up. Built on railroads, steel, coal and textiles the Empire had failed to modernize and could not compete on things like oil, refrigerators, radios and automobiles. In Malaya, the Empire’s richest colony, Parker points out that in 1923 only a sixteenth of the colony’s international purchases came from Britain.

The whole model of Empire was now in question. If the Empire wasn’t going to make the UK rich, then what was it good for? This was the question hanging in the air on September 29, 1923.

RATING: Four Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating Comment: One Fine Day circles to globe 100 years ago at the height of the British Empire. It highlights the challenges and contradictions that will ultimately lead to the Empire’s demise. A hefty, well researched and enlightening book.

NOTE: I read an advanced review copy courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher PublicAffairs. The book will be generally available next Tuesday, September 26, 2023.

[Brent L · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a snapshot of many parts of the British Empire in September 1923.

The reader is taken from England itself, to the Gilbert islands, Australia, India, Malaya, Burma, Kenya, Nigeria, and Jamaica. Many newspapers are cited and the book does a good job of showing multiple perspectives on how people thought, their concerns and struggles, and opinions of the Empire itself.

Unfortunately I found the multitude of places and names almost too much to handle; the book meanders from one person and place to another in such a loose and haphazard fashion that it was difficult to really get my teeth into. There was a lot to learn and interesting facts abound, but for me personally I would have enjoyed it more if the author had picked fewer topics and gone into them in greater detail. However I suppose then it couldn't have claimed to be an overview of the whole British Empire.

Picking September 1923 is an interesting choice. It makes sense in one way for being the time of the greatest territorial extent of the Empire, but it is detrimental to the pacing of the book. The feeling is like a prequel, a beginning that doesn't have an end, and so it doesn't feel satisfying to read in the same way as book that covers a defined historical event or life.

Overall the tone is mostly one of negativity towards the British Empire. The book shows how greed, callousness, and racism often undermined claims by the British of an enlightened rule.

Overall, 3.5 stars - liked it but didn't love it. Perhaps just not my preferred style of history.

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars not 5 because the very well made points perhaps are made too many times !

Once one accepts that The British Empire was not a land of milk and honey , was not created for the betterment of mankind .. it is quite liberating. Finally one loses the defensiveness and starts to see things from the point of view of the ruled not the ruler. Yes it’s been a long time coming but I have been converted ha !

The most enjoyable sections were those on India and malaya as was.

The following seems to me to be true. The British pat themselves on the back for having abolished the slave trade relatively early. And we deplore racism .. the most offensive and obvious recent case having been the apartheid regime in South Africa.

However it is impossible to read this account without seeing very clearly that the British were the most fervent upholders and instigators of racial segregation in the creation of their empire. The Indian , Kenyan , Malayan and west African sections of the book all describe this over and over.

The local guy didn’t stand a chance. Excluded from the higher posts of work , from the clubs , from the better railway carriages , and treated absolutely standardly as second class citizens despite the proclamations from London . We held the local people back or even more dastardly we messed with their local customs and culture so that they became as dispossessed . Land .. well they lost that too. We simply took it and sold it to our fellow Europeans.

It is an astonishing tale. Perhaps I need to read some Nial Ferguson for balance ?

[Adam Page · Rating 5 out of 5]

I listened to the audiobook, making the most of the blue-sky British weather this spring, listening while cycling, walking or idling. A journey that deftly adjusts focus from the macro to micro of the most sprawling Empire in history and the interactions with the remaining 75% of the globe. I found myself constantly making notes and am curious to go back again to revisit individual stories in the future. As an audiobook I would compare it favourably with One Summer by Bill Bryson, both having an almost dream-like quality woven together from wide-spanning, rigorous research.

Parker amply draws upon the fiction and memoirs of figures such as Orwell, Nehru and Forster as-well-as a multitude of loyal and unwilling subjects of the Empire. The personal gives an invaluable insight into the mechanisms of imperial rule, with a determining lever that could be found in the hands of Whitehall or one man a world away from his 'home'. It paints an Empire that was barbaric, exploitative and foolish while also holding high ideals that could succeed in enriching lives (occasionally beyond its white subjects, occasionally).

You do certainly find villains that embody the worst of colonialism such as the abhorrent white settlers in Kenya, while also encountering people with a more ambitious, well-meaning (and arguably naive) view of what the Empire could do for humanity. Many of us are the the descendants of both.

[Dropbear123 · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75/5

Decent but a bit disappointing as well. It’s mainly a history of the British Empire after WWI and the challenges it faced from a more confident and less deferential colonised subjects, especially about the race divide between the white settlers and officials and the natives. When it covers topics in a broad way it is pretty good - British migration to Australia and the failed attempts to settle rural Australia, phosphate mining in the Pacific, or the problems caused by the white colonists in Kenya for example.

However there are a few problems with the book that made it rather disappointing as well,

(1) The author takes a very biographical approach focussing on a mix of colonial commissioners, anti-colonial politicians, and people who happened to be travelling or working in the colonies at the time (such as Orwell in Burma). A few biographical bits would’ve been fine but reading the backgrounds of random commissioners really started to drag at the end.

(2) The author doesn’t do a great job of sticking to the ‘one day’ theme and a lot of the stuff described happens years previously or sometimes years after.

(3) The author chose 29th September 1923 as the title because it is the day the Mandate of Palestine became law and the British Empire reached its territorial peak. Unfortunately for whatever reason Palestine and the entire Middle East are just skipped over (maybe if the had spent less time on the biographies they could have been included.

[Will Burn · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely enthralling book. The selective narrative approach; choosing a small range/cast of characters to follow in all sections of the Empjre was extremely engaging. No bombardment of facts and figures. It was all woven together really nicely. It added a huge amount of depth to my understanding of empire, yet I felt like I was reading a dramatic novel and not an academic text. Yet the book is outstandingly well researched and referenced. The range and detail of sources used is remarkable. No bland or unsubstantiated assertions are made. The stories chosen enable the reader to form an opinion of the extraordinary complexity of empire. The exploitation, profiteering, and cultural obliteration, all based on the premise of British racial superiority. Yet at the same time, many of the empire builders themselves, battled with the knowledge that they were destroying indigenous populations in just truly terrible ways, all in the name of ‘civilisation’ and commerce. Some collaborated and helped enforce the subjugation of others, much to their own bitter resentment (eg Orwell). Some brought medicine and ‘education’. Others thought these very same benefits of ‘civilisation’ only led to trouble. Native populations who could challenge the ‘democratic’ power of the British were not wanted, whatever the high-minded opinions of liberal British imperialists.

[Jennifer Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Budget Adam Hochschild.

Like Hochschild, Matthew Parker is very good at using individual events and figures to show paint a larger portrait of the waning days of the British Empire. His prose is engaging and if you were able to take in his anecdotes piecemeal, you would have as good a time with this book as one could reading about racism, greed, subjugation, and environmental degradation.

Unlike Adam Hochschild, he is very bad at organizing his narrative, maintaining a central focus, and is in desperate need of a good editor. I had similar problems with The Sugar Barons, as well— he tends to meander in time a lot and it’s very hard to nail down a chronology.

You should ignore the date September 29th. It comes up for specific events a few times, but in a book of this length and breadth, it has very little overall significance— nowhere near enough to warrant a subtitle. Which just makes things even more confusing when Parker refuses to give you dates for the events he’s recounting! If you’re primed to default to 1923, you could be forgiven for thinking that was the year of Jallianwala Bagh massacre instead of 1919.

Overall, there’s enough that’s compelling here that I think this is a book worth reading— just read it with stilts.

[David Peddy]

I thought that the book was highly selective. Largely annecdotal and negative.
Whilst I readily concede that we took a lot out of many of our colonies and there was mistreatment of the indigenous population in many ways , Parker only briefly mentions the introduction of administration , rule of law , railways, roads, police forces, teachers & schools hospitals and medical care . Nowhere does he even refer to the introduction of European agricultural methods . In Rhodesia
( now called Zimbabwe) white settlers turned that country into 'the breadbasket of Africa' : a situation reversed when Mugabe confiscated the farms from the whites and gave them to hapless natives , leading to a massive reduction in productive output and the impoverishment , not to mention ,the starvation imposed upon that unfortuante land and its people .
Parker forgets that at 'home' in the British Isles , rife class distinctions led to those who thought they were superior 'looking down' on their fellow Brits .so it was not just in the Colonies . Innocent people here were also birched , imprisoned and worse, hanged , for crimes they did not commit
I thought that it was a partial and unsatsifactory account

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

On 29th September 1923, the British Empire reached its largest area and the Imperial Conference took place in London. This day is the focus for an enormously wide-ranging journey through the Empire from the Pacific to the Caribbean, detailing what was happening on that day, and analysing events over the previous years. And how shocking it all is - starting with the total destruction of a tiny Pacific island in order to mine phosphate, continuing via the attempts to "keep Australia inviolable for the white race", exposing the cruelty and callous attitude across India, Malaya, Burma, Kenya, Nigeria and the Caribbean islands - apart from a few exceptions who were ostracised and demoted, there is nothing edifying about the behaviour of the colonial masters. We get to know some of the people involved on both sides, all of whom are uneasy and aware that a peak is the start of a descent - the largest area of the Empire covered a quarter of the world's land mass, but soon started to decrease in size and in influence. Anybody who has any illusions about the British Empire should read this book. And if you didn't have any illusions, you should still read it, for the wealth of detail and evidence.

[Noah Piwonka · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid anecdotal survey of British colonies at the height of the Empire's territorial extent, with a particular focus on Malaya, India, Kenya, and West Africa. Good summary of the origins and development of certain territories, including racial relationships, economies, and cultures. Excellent utilization of primary sources from both British and local/indigenous writers. It's not meant to be a comprehensive overview of the empire, but the anecdotes and stories discussed within contribute to an overall assessment of the character of the empire at it's zenith. I think the book would have benefitted from a more significant discussion of the relationship of the empire (and particularly, the British Isles themselves) to the dominions (Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Ireland, and South Africa), as those relationships were still extremely important to the empire as a whole, but it may have made the book too unwieldy. All in all, a great piece of historical writing that helped to color in my understanding of the British Empire, benefitting from a deep focus on a select few characters and events within an extremely broad geographical scope.

[Nico · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the book is an interesting overview of a snapshot of the British Empire in the early 1900s, it is also a disjointed one. The author bounces from one location and one topic to the next, seldom wrapping up the previous location or topic before doing so. With the start of each new chapter, the reader is thrust into a new location, and it's not uncommon to see 10 or 15 names on the first page that you have never heard before, many of which will not be explained. The book often feels as if the author wants to show how much he knows, while not doing the work of drawing many conclusions from that knowledge. The information given is interesting, but everything feels rushed and incomplete. Meanwhile, the book is set in the shadow of the Imperial conference of 1923, but the book seldom discusses anything about the conference. In the end, it makes the choice of the conference feel like an arbitrary one. Some chapters I enjoyed immensely, others less so, but the book overall left me feeling unsatisfied. Even the final chapter, after almost 600 pages of reading, comes to a screeching halt in about three paragraphs, with no real resolution or conclusion of any sort.

[Bharath · Rating 5 out of 5]

One fine day starts off with an intriguing location in the Imperial Empire of 1923 - A remote island in the Oceania. From the get go, it is an engaging and balanced look at the colonial empire at its Zenith, just before it starts unraveling. The narrative runs like a grand novel with multiple fantastic locations (From Banaba to the attempt of settling the Australian Outback to the jungles of Malaysia and more) and equally interesting characters right from the all too familiar Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru to unknown (to me!) characters such as Marcus Garvey and Hugh Clifford. Mathew Parker aslo gives an insight into the times through the lens of important colonial writers such as E M Forster and Eric Blair (George Orwell who was also a Colonial Officer in Burma). Through the themes of war, plunder of natural resources and race, this book prompts one to think that although the primary actors have changed, has the social and political global situation really improved(or even changed) much in the last century.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would highly recommend it.

[Desirae · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 rounded up. For its size, this was a relatively quick read due mostly to the author's engaging writing style, though occasionally it flagged and the ending seemed to peter out. I was especially taken with the emphasis on various writers' experiences of Empire (EM Forster, George Orwell, Somerset Maugham all make an appearance- even Proust gets a mention). The chapters on India were the most engaging and nuanced. It's a great conceit for a book- looking at certain aspects of far-flung colonies of the British Empire during the time of its greatest geographical reach (late 1923 apparently). And even though the author is critical of Empire, I'd recommend this book more for Anglophiles than those looking for a book focusing on British cruelty or incompetence in running its Empire; you come away from this book, and others of its ilk, grappling with the fact that if it had not been the British, it would've been Germany, or France, or Russia-- and how much worse would that have been?

[S Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Everyone who enjoyed the comparatively high standard of living in England was complicit in the empire, Orwell contended, without which England would be reduced to 'a cold and unimportant little island where we should all have to work very hard and live mainly on herrings and potatoes. That is the very last thing that any left-winger wants. Yet the left-winger continues to feel that he has no moral responsibility for imperialism. He is perfectly ready to accept the products of Empire and to save his solubly sneering at the people who hold the Empire together."
This was an altogether excellent book, albeit long. I was grateful for his insight and understanding of this time 100 years ago, and yet I must confess that I was ignorant of so much that it was a very low bar to put me in awe by his informative big picture framework.

[Jarrett Bell · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterful tour of the British Empire on the day it reached its greatest extent—September 29, 1923. From the Marshall Islands, Australia, Hong Kong, and Malaya to India, Kenya, West Africa, and the UK, Parker takes readers on a tour of the empire from east to west and in the process, captures an empire on the verge of crisis, as nationalist movements gained steam and as British confidence in their imperial mission and white supremacy was challenged and found wanting in the wake of the First World War.

“One Fine Day” makes for fascinating reading and convincingly makes the case that the movements and trends that would conspire to collapse the empire a few decades later were well underway, and many British observers at the time realized it and were resigned to their coming loss.

[Christian Finch · Rating 4 out of 5]

One Fine Day is a marathon read at 621 pages. The length of the book for me made what happened early in the book easy to forget. With that said…I enjoyed the unique and captivating way Matthew Parker helps us live a seemingly random day, September 29, 1923. The sun never set on the British Empire so the day’s travels take us from well known Jamaica, India, and Nigeria to remote Ocean Island and Malaya. But perhaps the most interesting part of the book is the characters we meet throughout the day. Some of the most important in history like Nehru to others we know well like George Orwell and ones we should get to know better like Marcus Garvey.

[John Salisbury · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bought this after reading review in The Times where it was described as a balanced view of The Empire. It is not. We get chapter after chapter of negativity focussing on racism and economic exploitation. The Hachette release summary is accurate in this respect.

If you want a dose of self flagellating misery similar to that contained in William Dalrymple's The Anarchy or David Veever's The Great Defiance then this book is for you.

[Anthony Etherington · Rating 5 out of 5]

A substantial work, packed with detail about the realties of life in the British Empire in the first quarter of the twentieth century for both rulers and ruled. Drawing heavily on the comments and correspondence of people living at the time, ‘One Fine Day’ exposes the conflicts at the heart of the imperial dream: the ideals and ambitions, often, though by no means always, honestly held, the economics, racism and hypocrisy. History at its most compelling…and sobering!

[Jenny Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought I knew enough about the British Empire but it turns out I did not. This book looks at the workings of the empire all around the world at a time after the first world war which we can now see had a devastating impact on its stability. I had never heard of most of the leaders seeking a fairer deal and then outright rejection of their status as subject races. The British sense of superiority comes across as the most pernicious aspect of the empire.

[History Today]

This was chosen by Pratinav Anil, Lecturer at St Edmund Hall, Oxford and author of Another India: The Making of the World’s Largest Muslim Minority, 1947-77 (Hurst, 2023), as one of History Today’s Books of the Year 2023.

Find out why at HistoryToday.com.

[Ian Veitch · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great enjoyable book. I love history and this provided insights into various areas of the world I had little to no knowledge of and gave some fascinating information and stories of the indigenous population and British living there. Its nice to see a book with obscure but poignant detail from all sides about the empire.

[Luke Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

It lost me in the middle due to a unnecessarily long chapter on indian politics which deviated from the other formats but this is a fascinating look at the shaky, extraction based foundations that built the British Empire. The true nature is laid on full display with great ties to key critics like Orwell and EM Forester

[David Akeroyd · Rating 5 out of 5]

For a long book this actually felt short to me. Nothing is very in-depth but it felt like it did give you a sense of the state of the British Empire at that time while also foreshadowing what would happen to it in the future.