Original version

BBC News North America

BBC News Europe

The BBC's international 24-hour news and information channel, as seen by viewers in Africa.

BBC News Africa

BBC News Latin America

BBC News South Asia

BBC News Asia Pacific

BBC News Middle East

Franny Moyle

IWC Media

Robbie Coltrane

Robson Green

Emeka Sesay

Tuppence Middleton

Sean Biggerstaff

Antonia Thomas

Nitin Ganatra

Don Warrington

Nick Ikunda

Jane Tubb

Titana Muthui

Andrew Quigley

Rian Gordon

Bradley Richards

Paapa Essiedu

Nikki Amuka-Bird

John Mullen

Catherine Ross

Sule Rimi

Fumilayo Brown-Olateju

Sarah Barclay

Richard Curson Smith

The Novel: The Empire Writes Back

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

The Empire Writes Back

The Novel

BBC News - The Novel, The Empire Writes Back

The final episode examines the British Empire within storytelling.

The final episode of the series examines how the British Empire was celebrated in the novels of some writers and taken apart and upended by others.

Using performed readings and with contributions from contemporary novelists the series explores the ideas and emotions that novels continue to bring to their readers. The final episode of the series examines how the British Empire was often taken as a given and widely celebrated in novels of some writers, though in others - such as Rudyard Kipling's espionage yarn Kim - it was deeply questioned. Fifty years later, a different type of spy, James Bond, fought to keep the empire going when it had already gone. By the 1950s a new voice had emerged - that of novelists from the newly independent former British colonies, such as Nigeria's Chinua Achebe. The twin evils of racism and slavery come full circle in recent works such Malorie Blackman's series Noughts and Crosses and The Sellout, a savage comedy by Paul Beatty - in which a present-day African-American Los Angeleno keeps a slave. The power of novels past and present continues to move and to delight readers all around the world.

BBC World News

BBC  World News

Magazines & Reviews

Examining the novel from a series of unique perspectives.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

The Novel

The Empire Writes Back

Contributors

Genres

Series

BBC News North America

About BBC World News