Hilary Mantel Quotes

Is it not passing brave to be a King and ride in triumph through Persepolis?

Every empire has to get sucked down the drain. As a British person, I know how it feels.

Set in a nameless colonial country, in an unspecified era, Katie Kitamura's second novel tracks the fortunes of a landowning family during the first waves of civil unrest.

Were you to read the British press today, you would learn that the British Empire never forgets its defeats.

The conservation of monarchy in any portion of South America will tend to break the shock of that inevitable divorce by which the New World is about to be divided by the Old... But as to putting it forward, as a project or proposition of ours, that is out of the question. Monarchy in Mexico, and monarchy in Brazil, would cure the evils of universal democracy, and prevent the drawing of the line which I almost dread – America versus Europe. The United States, naturally enough, aim at this division and cherish the democracy which leads to it.

First there was the changing of the guard outside the British Residence; then, through the cast-iron doors pricked in gold with the monogram of Victoria Regina, the high commissioner’s black Rolls Royce slowly emerged. On either side of the car as it slowly advanced rode a detachment of the King’s Horse…The procession, led by officers of the Egyptian mounted police, continued as far as the small cathedral of Saint Mary…where Bishop Gwynne of Cairo and Khartoum…waited in a chasuble and alb to receive the high commissioner…It was a world of ceremony complete unto itself, and the patriotic convictions served up in Bishop Gwynne’s sermons inspired the congregation with a feeling of everlastingness and certainty of fate.

The enthusiasm for colonies is dead.

… there is a notion of exchanging Hong Kong for a more healthy colony.

The ancient city Aqpu, where kings who had preceded me had built, had deteriorated and turned into ruined hills. I rebuilt the city completely, decorated it and made it bigger than it was before. I then built my palace.

… the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving picaninnies

Postcolonial critics are, I suspect, wrong when they argue that the mass of British people still mourn the loss of empire. But Britain's politicians - and its Foreign Office - have found it hard to adjust to the loss, not so much of onetime colonies as of the global clout the colonies once afforded.

It's funny - Americans are the colonials who ran away from the royals, and yet we're fascinated by them.

The painful truth may be that Zimbabwe, the youngest of Africa's former colonies, has simply followed where the continent has led, treading the well-worn path beaten out of the lie that taking power from the colonialists and delivering democracy to the people are one and the same.

I turned down the OBE because its not a club you want to join when you look at the villains whove got it. Its all the things I think are despicable: patronage, deferring to the monarchy and the name of the British Empire, which is a monument of exploitation and conquest.

I'm not from around these parts. I'm from a little place called England: we used to run the world before you.

It is too often forgotten that when the Europeans gained enough maritime skills and gunpowder to conquer most of the world, they not only colonized the bulk of the world's people but they colonized the interpretation of history itself. Human history was rewritten to favor them at the expense of other people. The roots of modern racism can be traced to this conquest and colonization.

Our defeat was always implicit in the victory of others; our wealth has always generated our poverty by nourishing the prosperity of others - the empires and their native overseers. In the colonial and neocolonial alchemy, gold changes into scrap metal and food into poison.

It is in the nature of imperialism that citizens of the imperial power are always among the last to know-or care-about circumstances in the colonies.

The Portuguese, Dutch and English have been for a long time year after year, shipping home the treasures of India in their big vessels. We Germans have been all along been left to watch it. Germany would do likewise, but hers would be treasures of spiritual knowledge.

Why should the brave Spanish soldiers brag? The sunne never sets in the Spanish dominions, but ever shineth on one part or other we have conquered for our king.

For four hundred years European civilization has dominated the world - for better or for worse. It is convenient, and flattering, for Americans to assume that this is all over; but it very rash to do so.

Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land but from our minds as well.

The Europeans wanted gold and slaves, like everybody else; but at the same time they wanted statues put up to themselves as people who had done good things for the slaves.

In New York I heard A Piece of Ground, written by a white South African, Jeremy Taylor. I modified it a little and sang it myself. That song is very special to me because it deals with the land question in southern Africa. We were dispossessed of our land.