This critical historical exploration shows 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.
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There is something Shakespearian about Matthew Parker’s insightful argument that it was at exactly the time the British Empire reached its greatest territorial size that the factors coalesced which were to destroy it. Whether you regard the British Empire as an overall boon—as I do—or as an abomination, Parker has rendered a signal service by convincingly pinpointing the exact fulcrum moment in its half-millennium-long history.
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Andrew Roberts, author of Churchill