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One Fine Day

Britain's Empire on the Brink

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One Fine Day

By: Matthew Parker
Narrated by: Ben Onwukwe
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'Breathtaking... vital and important. A wonderful read' PETER FRANKOPAN

'Marvellous... escapes the inane, balance-sheet view of Empire and sees its full complexity' SATHNAM SANGHERA

'Excellent... his mastery of detail is impeccable' DOMINIC SANDBROOK, Sunday Times

'Extraordinary... [brings] the world of a century ago to fresh, vivid life' ALEX VON TUNZELMANN

THE STORY OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE AT ITS MAXIMUM TERRITORIAL EXTENT

On Saturday 29 September 1923, the Palestine Mandate became law and the British Empire now covered a scarcely credible quarter of the world's land mass, containing 460 million people. It was the largest empire the world had ever seen. But it was beset by debt and doubts.

This book is a new way of looking at the British Empire. It immerses the reader in the contemporary moment, focusing on particular people and stories from that day, gleaned from newspapers, letters, diaries, official documents, magazines, films and novels: from a remote Pacific island facing the removal of its entire soil, across Australia, Burma, India and Kenya to London and the West Indies.

In some ways, the issues of a hundred years ago are with us still: debates around cultural and ethnic identity in a globalised world; how to manage multi-ethnic political entities; racism; the divisive co-opting of religion for political purposes; the dangers of ignorance. In others, it is totally alien. What remains extraordinary is the Empire's ability to reveal the most compelling human stories. Never before has there been a book which contains such a wide spread of vivid experiences from both colonised and coloniser: from the grandest governors to the humblest migrants, policemen and nurses. Europe Great Britain World Imperialism British Empire Africa England Social justice
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Critic reviews

Compelling... we remain in a state of suspense throughout
Extraordinary... superb... It is a book for serious people who can handle difficult moral contradictions, and will undoubtedly annoy zealots of all stripes
I greatly enjoyed Matthew Parker's One Fine Day... hugely impressive in its research and balance and fully deserving of its many plaudits
Excellent... his mastery of detail is impeccable (Dominic Sandbrook)
A refreshingly nuanced montage of the Empire on its last legs... Empire was many things and Parker belongs to that vanishing minority that recognises this. What we have here is a fair appraisal of the life of the land, elegantly synthesised... By 1923, Parker shows with suggestive brilliance in his montage, Empire was on its last legs (Pratinav Anil)
Marvellous... escapes the inane, balance-sheet view of Empire and sees it in its full complexity
Breathtaking, extraordinarily rich and beautifully written. One Fine Day is a vital and important history that is truly global in scope and ambition. A wonderful read
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.
Extraordinary. Matthew 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.
An epic portrait of the British Empire on the brink... Parker paints a brilliant picture, teeming with fresh faces and new voices
There is something Shakespearian about Matthew Parker's insightful argument that it was at exactly the time that the British Empire reached its greatest territorial size that the factors coalesced which were to destroy it... Parker has rendered a signal service by convincingly pinpointing the exact fulcrum moment in its half-millennium long history
Exquisitely crafted and beautifully written, full of delicious detail and extraordinary insight
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
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
All stars
Most relevant
The book gives a fascinating insight into many parts of the British Empire on one day, but also describes how each country got to that point. Using some key characters from its history brings what might be a set of disparate stories together eg Sir Hugh Clifford’s various roles, and also makes the telling of the story very personal. I came away from this book feeling that Britain didn’t set out to wrong our Empire, but ended up doing so because of our arrogance, avarice and ignorance.
The narration was sympathetic, with the slight caveat that the pauses between phrases were often unnaturally long.

A unique perspective on Empire

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A personal selection of key events around the peak of the geographical extent of the British Empire. The author falls down a series of historical rabbit holes. The retelling of the Amritsar Massacre pulls no punches, I found the the story of Marcus Garvey and the Blackstar Shipping Line fascinating. I would have liked more on Southern Africa. If you are a Brit like me, you won’t be left glowing with pride but you will be the wiser about for it.

Eclectic

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An excellent way to show how the British Empire went to seed. Recommend to anyone wanting to know about the British Empire

Great Listen

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The British Empire at its territorial height and moment of greatest fragility — an enormous undertaking to treat fairly and accurately, and one Parker succeeds at. While full representation of the quarter of humanity under the empire would be impossible, we meet a wide range of those who would soon be pivotal in its downfall: colonial officials both hubristic and humane, the exploited and the exploiters of empire, the leaders of nascent independence movements and cultural luminaries on many sides of many major political and cultural questions of empire, with their many voices and biographies represented honestly.

The narrator is unfortunately not quite up to the task of conveying all this. He speaks, in what seems, to be long. And random. Pauses, as if he. Must stop for breath every, few words or perhaps. Is at the end of the, line on. Paper. If he is attempting to give the reader time to process phrases and clauses it would be helpful if the pauses corresponded with them. He also engages in the rather silly game of putting on accents, which at times feels appropriate but at others verges into parody, and at others is merely confusing: Canadians sound more Texan than anything else! A good narrator gets out of the way of the story. This narrator constantly injects his strange dramatic choices into the listener's attention, which unnecessarily detracts from an excellent review of a fascinating period of history.

Excellent and sympathetic survey marred by performance

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