Welcome to the November 2025 History Reclaimed Newsletter.
We begin with three news items.
Readers will be aware that the BBC’s current travails over impartiality stem from the leak of a 19-page memorandum by the journalist Michael Prescott who was for three years an advisor on editorial standards to the Corporation. Prescott’s dossier includes the revelation that President Trump’s remarks were falsified in a BBC documentary before the 2024 presidential election, and readers will know that the President has threatened to sue the BBC for a billion dollars. The memorandum, brought to light and published by the Daily Telegraph, can be read here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/06/read-devastating-internal-bbc-memo-in-full/
In a full discussion of many of the BBC’s distortions, one page of the nineteen is devoted to History Reclaimed. In 2022 Alex Gray compiled our own dossier of the Corporation’s historical mistakes and prejudices, based on four programmes and two news bulletins over the preceding two years which covered subjects including slavery and the slave trade, the restitution of the Benin Bronzes, the Irish Famine of the late 1840s, the Bengal Famine of 1943-4 and the imputed racism of Winston Churchill. History Reclaimed called for accuracy and impartiality, the presentation of the full range of historical interpretations, the use of experts rather than ‘presenters’, and the establishment of a panel of qualified historians to advise and assist the BBC. You can find our report here:
We did not receive a direct reply, but the BBC put out a dismissive response accusing us of ‘cherry-picking a handful of examples’. We now discover that Mr Prescott thought our points ‘fascinating and compelling’ and also ‘reasonable’, and that he encouraged a meeting with us, but this was ‘judged inappropriate’ by the BBC.
History Reclaimed notes that like so many other organisations and people in British life, we too have been ignored by the BBC when making accurate criticisms of their content and modest proposals for its improvement. We take heart from Mr Prescott’s endorsement of our points. We will watch with interest to see if the presentation of history on BBC radio and television improves. Given that we were brushed aside then and that the BBC is trying to deny its systemic failings now , we are not optimistic. Perhaps President Trump will have better luck.
We have been busy in recent days responding to the renewed interest in our work following the BBC debacle. Robert Tombs has written about the BBC’s distressing claims that Commonwealth soldiers were treated differently from British war dead by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/11/remembrance-sunday-bbc-insults-our-glorious-dead/
Lawrence Goldman appeared on GB News to explain our criticisms of the BBC’s history output:
https://x.com/joshxhowie/status/1987837145013207379?s=61
David Abulafia has rebutted new demands for the return of the Rosetta Stone:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-rosetta-stone-does-not-belong-in-egypt
Our second news story continues with the theme of ‘restitution’, and concerns the Benin Bronzes, or more particularly, a recent report in The Guardian that – who would have believed it? – some of the returned bronzes have already gone missing. (‘Restitution Row: How Nigeria’s new home for the Benin Bronzes ended up with clay replicas’, The Guardian, 12 Oct. 2025). Readers will know that we have not only been exercised over the false narrative that these artefacts were ‘stolen and looted’ from Benin following the 1897 British expedition to Benin City, but concerned that any objects returned, whether to authorities in Nigeria or Benin, would be be purloined and disappear. So they have been, just as we and others foretold. History Reclaimed trusts (though we cannot be confident) that this ends the foolish practice of ‘restituting’ these objects on the part of British institutions, among them the universities of Oxford and Cambridge to whom we wrote with a warning in 2023.
Thirdly, we note with satisfaction and with applause the award of the Nobel Prize for Economics this year to the Israeli economic historian Joel Mokyr, who has taught for many years at Northwestern University, Chicago. The Nobel citation commended Mokyr ‘for having identified the prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress.’ Mokyr is an expert on the origins of the Industrial Revolution and has always been clear in publications going back to the 1990s (and in common with the expert on the history of the slave trade, David Eltis) that the profits of the Atlantic slave/sugar economy were in no way large enough to be accounted a major cause of industrialisation. History Reclaimed has cited Mokyr in our published articles on this topic. See for example
Empire, the Slave Trade, and Britain’s Wealth: A Reply to Will Hutton in The Guardian
Among our newly published articles we draw your attention to Alistair Parker’s detailed discussion of the so-called Sotik Massacre in Kenya in 1905 – ‘so-called’ because as he shows so effectively, there was no massacre. This has not deterred the usual alliance of lawyers, politicians and special interest groups from making outlandish claims and demands for astronomical reparations for events that did not occur. In a careful analysis based on research in the archives, Parker narrates a familiar story: that British colonial forces came to the assistance of a native tribe, in this case the Maasai, who were being harassed by other tribes, the Kipsigis and the Nandi. There were indeed casualties in battle, but the claim that some 1850 men, women and children were slaughtered by a Maxim machine gun is completely without foundation.
The 1905 British Sotik Punitive Expedition. Massacre or Lawfare for £168 billion?
Marcus Rutherford has contributed two reviews of recently published books. The first considers a new, broad history of African enslavement – all of it, not just West African and Atlantic slavery – as narrated in Martin Plaut’s book, Unbroken Chains. As Marcus explains, as a first attempt to explain the subject across the whole of the continent and over 5000 years, the book inevitably has a its weaknesses but is to be admired for setting out a pattern and shape to the history that other scholars can now fill in. It is also worth noting that Plaut was previously Africa editor of the BBC World Service, reminding us of the expertise and scholarship that used to distinguish the BBC.
Book Review: Unbroken Chains – A 5,000 Year History of African Enslavement
His second review is of Nigel Biggar’s new book on Reparations: Slavery and the Tyranny of Imaginary Guilt. This eagerly awaited riposte to all the claims now being lodged for reparations for historical acts for which we in the present have no responsibility, is a masterly discussion of both ethics and history, at which Nigel Biggar excels. As a historian, Lord Biggar demonstrates the weak evidential bases for many of these claims.
“Reparations – Slavery and the Tyranny of Imaginary Guilt” by Nigel Biggar
They’re often based on assumptions about the economic significance of 18th century slave labour and its products that do not stand up to close scrutiny and the most recent and reliable research. As a philosopher and theologian he explains why people today, who were not responsible for slavery, expropriation and violence in the past, cannot be held responsible for payment of damages to people who were themselves born hundreds of years after the events complained of. Readers will be aware of Nigel’s leadership in our critique of ‘Project Spire’, the Church of England’s plan to pay £100 million (and more) in reparations to descendants of slaves living in the West Indies today. See:
A critical commentary on Church Commissioners’ historic links to African chattel enslavement
Rohan Fernando contributes a further article in a genre he has made all his own: the careful reconstruction of the cultural institutions established by the British in India, and the biographies of some of the most notable public servants who lived and worked in the sub-continent under British rule. This time he introduces us to the life of the scholar, reformer and judge, Sir Alexander Johnston.
The Ceylon Journal and its Tribute to Sir Alexander Johnston
Johnston’s career in Ceylon bears some relation to that of Sir William Jones, the linguist and legal scholar recently defamed by University College, Oxford, where Jones was educated:
Both men displayed deep intellectual curiosity and a humane commitment to the welfare of the indigenous people, another of the faces of British rule.
Having questioned whether Lord Mansfield’s judgment in the Somerset Case of 1772 was recognised at the time as a crucial development in the history of slavery and freedom
Literature, Assumptions, and History: More Thoughts on Lord Mansfield
the literary scholar Lona Manning has now contributed a second and related essay on Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park. In recent times it has become an article of faith among critics that the novel is about slavery, and that it displays Austen’s anti-slavery credentials. But as Manning shows, there is precious little evidence for this, whether in the book itself or in relation to the historical and literary contexts in which Jane Austen worked. Once more scholars present what they want to believe, rather than what can be proven from the text.
At a time when the British school history curriculum is again under review (and the review seems likely to change it in adverse ways under the influence of political manipulation: see https://mol.im/a/15260797) the educationist and Founder/Director of the campaigning group Don’t Divide Us, Alka Sehgal-Cuthbert, has contributed an important essay on the foundations of the western educational tradition:
She examines the educational ideas of four key figures in the western philosophical tradition – Plato, Augustine, Vico and Kant – on the purposes of learning and the transmission of knowledge. Taken together, their ideas and influence have shaped the western educational tradition and our current conception of a liberal education. But that ideal is now threatened by many different forces and actors who seek to manipulate the curriculum for ulterior ends. This essay should be compulsory reading for anyone with an interest in what our children learn, especially the history they’re taught at school.
Thank you once again for your interest in History Reclaimed. Please spread the word and encourage others to explore our website. Please consider making a donation to History Reclaimed. Events in Britain in the last few days have shown the importance of defending accurate and objective History. They’ve also shown that History Reclaimed is ‘cutting through’. We hope you’ll redouble your support for us as we present the case for the honest and impartial study of the past.
Lawrence Goldman
Robert Tombs
David Abulafia
Zewditu Gebreyohanes
Alexander Gray
