David Olusoga

Racism is not primal or instinctive.

— David Olusoga

Ten Guinea Street is on a Historic England site.

— David Olusoga

Civilisation is slippery, the word has multiple and contested meanings.

— David Olusoga

I only ever wanted to do history, and make documentaries.

— David Olusoga

I am as much British, white and working class, my mother's background, as I am black and Nigerian, my father's heritage.

— David Olusoga

Talking about class and identity can be as divisive as talking about race and racism.

— David Olusoga

Aside from his other achievements, Winston Churchill wrote a six-volume, 1.9m-word account of the second world war and his role in winning…

— David Olusoga

The easiest way to make television authentic is to make it really authentic.

— David Olusoga

Excusing or downplaying British racism with comparisons to the US is a bad habit with a long history.

— David Olusoga

As a historian, I always think you know what a moment was 20 years later.

— David Olusoga

There's always been a snobby dismissal of football and the emotions it elicits in millions of people.

— David Olusoga

In the Britain of 2019, around a third of a million of our fellow citizens are homeless.

— David Olusoga

In the case of the second world war the distorting factor is not poetry but our seemingly insatiable need to view the…

— David Olusoga

It is of course perfectly possible for a university, or any institution, to carry out a rigorous investigation into the historical origins…

— David Olusoga

History suggests that the disillusioned and the disaffected do not readily take to the streets nor man the barricades to defend a…

— David Olusoga

The nation of 2019, exponentially wealthier, appears to have a fraction of its former self-belief and little faith in its capacity to…

— David Olusoga

When historians write the last pages of their books, and the producers of history documentaries sit down to edit the final minutes…

— David Olusoga

I've received tweets that I suspect people wouldn't have sent in 2015. Is that a changed country or is that people who…

— David Olusoga

We nonchalantly expect that next year's smartphone will be faster and better than this year's, yet we struggle to imagine that society…

— David Olusoga

The great untruth around which everything pivots is the idea that the defenders of these statues are the defenders of history and…

— David Olusoga

The old racism of imperialism not only rendered the postwar political elite unable to see black people as full British citizens, it…

— David Olusoga

For black and Asian people of my generation, the England team and the cross of St George were once ingredients in a…

— David Olusoga

Public buildings, built from the rates and taxes paid by past generations, are being auctioned off by impoverished councils who need the…

— David Olusoga

The primitive fight-or-flight regions of our mammalian brains react to immediate danger. We instinctively run from an avalanche but the gradual retreat…

— David Olusoga

Schools unable to keep their lights on and their doors open for the full working week is just the latest bleak instalment…

— David Olusoga

The loss of the American colonies was the first time the process of British empire building had been put significantly into reverse,…

— David Olusoga

I think I was eight the first time I saw the Benin bronzes. I was taken to see them at the British…

— David Olusoga

When the banks crashed the global economy in 2007-08, it was they who received a bailout while the rest of us got…

— David Olusoga

Some of the problem with IQ tests stems from the inescapable reality that human intelligence is staggeringly complex and multifaceted.

— David Olusoga

The emotional compact between football clubs and their supporters is visceral and usually lifelong.

— David Olusoga

As one of the very few black historians who, from time to time, appears on TV, my daily life is a constant,…

— David Olusoga

Not only does the UK have the highest levels of regional inequality among the major economies, the imbalance is widening, not narrowing.

— David Olusoga

1819 was a year of hunger, mass unemployment, political repression and murderous, state-sanctioned violence.

— David Olusoga

Whether we like it or not, there are moments in history when pessimism is the appropriate response.

— David Olusoga

Everyone is happy for the history of slavery to be investigated so long as the investigation examines the parts in which we…

— David Olusoga

Theories, books and ideas created within ivory towers had real-world consequences.

— David Olusoga

At 18, I stood in the Louvre in front of the paintings that TV had first shown me.

— David Olusoga

Black history is a series of missing chapters from British history. I'm trying to put those bits back in.

— David Olusoga

It was through watching documentaries on the BBC in the late 1980s that I first became interested in art and history.

— David Olusoga

Black people are expected to be passive citizens, good immigrants, mute and grateful.

— David Olusoga