Matthew Parker is a critically acclaimed historian who has written for numerous UK national newspapers, literary and historical magazines, as well as lecturing around the world and contributing to TV and radio programs in the UK, Canada and the US. An elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Parker's books include The Battle of Britain, Monte Cassino, Panama Fever, The Sugar Barons, and Goldeneye: Ian Fleming in Jamaica. Parker lives in east London with his family.
"""A panoramic view of the British Empire on September 29, 1923... Parker vividly demonstrates the empire's vast reach and the 'impossibly conflicting interests between government [and] the governed.'...Accessible and sturdy, this expansive account provides solid ground for understanding the decline of the British Empire. It's an eye-opening and a unique vantage point from which to study 20th-century history.""--Publishers Weekly ""An ambitious history of the beginning of the end of vast dominions of the British Empire on Sept. 29, 1923... a multilayered portrait, with deep contextual background...An impressive work of research and synthesis tracing the end of an empire.""--Kirkus ""Exquisitely crafted and beautifully written, full of delicious detail and extraordinary insight.""--Augustus Casely-Hayford, OBE, curator, cultural historian, and director of V&A East ""Extraordinary. Parker's magisterial sweep through one day of British imperial history and culture plunges us into the global complexity of the British Empire, bringing the world of a century ago to fresh, vivid life. An astonishing achievement.""--Alex von Tunzelmann, author of Indian Summer and Fallen Idols ""Marvellous. Escapes the inane, balance-sheet view of empire and sees it in its full complexity.""--Sathnam Sanghera, author of Empireland ""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.""--Andrew Roberts, author of Churchill ""An engrossing and wide-ranging account of the zenith of the British Empire--with all the contradictions, brittleness, ambition and hubris that moment entailed. Across Continents and characters, Matthew Parker provides a new, global history of British imperialism which feels both epic and immediate.""--Tristram Hunt, director of the Victoria and Albert Museum"