Newsinger challenges the claim that the British Empire was a kinder, gentler empire and suggests that the description 'rogue state' is more fitting. In a wonderful popular history of key episodes in British imperial history, he illustrates the darker side of the glory years - Britain's deep involvement in the Chinese opium trade; Gladstone's maiden parliamentary speech defending his family's slave plantation in Jamaica paying particular attention to the strenuous efforts of the colonised to free themselves of the motherland's baleful rule.