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I was initially quite impressed by this book but I suggest you read a standard narrative of empire and return to this afterwards as a useful and often wise interpretation of that history. I can strongly recommend the old but still serviceable trilogy by James/Jan Morris.

Where Ferguson scores is in his thematic approach which is revealed in the Acknowledgements as having been driven by a link to a Channel Four TV series. This explains some of the book's oddities where the narrative seems to be driven by scripting concerns rather than by the history itself.

This background is shown most clearly when Ferguson dwells periodically on one case study to illustrate a thesis in a way that suggests a marginal distortion simply to make the thematics interesting for a popular audience - the human interest angle that television desperately craves.

Similarly, 'news' rather than historical values intrude when it becomes clear that Ferguson is playing to polemics about empire, again distorting the story somewhat to create a binary good-bad comparison that he carries well until it all comes to a shuddering halt in a weak final chapter.

There is something worrying about popular history that is driven by the attention spans of a half-educated and easily bored audience. It is neither fish not fowl because Ferguson is compromising on something he undoubtedly is - a very fine historian indeed.

From from the negatives to the positives. The thematic approach (so long as one understands that it leaves out as much as it covers) is very insightful. I learned a great deal of new things derived from current research and Ferguson's own interesting conservative but humane overview.

I may not have changed my overall opinion of the imperial project but my understanding was changed of how it operated and developed and from there my opinion on some matters changed. This is very much to the credit of Ferguson.

The first three chapters/programmes (as you will) give a plausible and informative outline of the piratical origins of empire, explore the dependence of the empire on mass white migration and explore the ideological impact of the verminous spread of missionary activity.

This is not to dispute the ambiguity of almost every aspect of the story. The miserabilist Christianity of the British did help to almost eliminate the slave trade after all and the positive side of piracy was the total push it gave to global modernisation which ultimately benefited humanity.

The book then goes on to explore the rise of a form of Tory orientalism that replaced the liberal missionary approach which had helped to trigger the disaster of the Indian Mutiny when the Empire showed its true and vicious colours.

Again, there is ambiguity. The British (in Jamaica, Tasmania and India - add Kenya and others not mentioned by Ferguson) behaved repulsively and violently but Ferguson is right that the alternative to the British Empire towards the end would have been Empires yet more vicious still.

Perhaps that does not justify Empire but it does cast a different light on the Anglo-sphere as progressively more civilised than its angry and hungry German, French, Belgian and Japanese rivals. But it is not as if any Empire is kinder when it is existentially threatened and this matters.

Empire is essentially a project about power. The British learned to rule through holding an iron fist ready at any time to strike (much like the American Empire today) but showing restraint in order to avoid having to use it. The Empire collapses when there is no more money for the iron fist.

Ferguson implies that the loss of empire was a matter of will power but I do not think it was so simple. It was also about cash and other ways of making money. By the end, the Empire was getting the attention of second rate minds.

Tory imperialism certainly triggered its own reaction after the Boer War (there is a sort of call-and-response between generations in this history) in elite contempt for its own creation amidst awareness that the thing was built ultimately on brute force and was not cheap to maintain.

The brute fact is that the Liberal blunder of 1914 and the moral crusade of 1939/1940 (which meant no deal with German aspirations) gutted the finances of the 'holding company'. It was then 'for sale'. Otherwise, the Empire might still be with us today as a set of conservative dominions.

At all times, Ferguson is fair and sophisticated in his approach. If one might dispute his conclusions at times, nevertheless he does lay out the facts that are relevant to the disputation and his opinions are always reasoned and plausible - at least for the first five chapters.

The final chapter is more problematic. Partly this is a matter of it being closer to our time. A lot of ground is covered in too short a space. Partly it is because he quietly and steadily slips into a sotto voce polemic in favour his conservative vision of neo-imperial Atlanticism.

It is at this point that the reader feels he is leaving the land of 'objective' history and moving into the land of tele-subjectivism - not entirely but enough to feel a little uncomfortable and exploited. Why - one asks - is there such an extended section on Gallipolli? For Australian sales?

It does not help that chunks of imperial history are left out - East Asia scarcely exists in the narrative. The Opium Wars are mentioned only in passing. The Americans exist only to revolt and save us without any significant mention Anglo-American relations in the meantime.

Nevertheless, the book is recommended for its insights which are considerable, especially in those five first chapters. It is best probably to see this as a selection of evidenced opinions and insightful anecdotes and tales that add understanding to the wider narrative history.

On balance well worth reading but do not take it as all there is to say on the subject by any means and use your critical faculties (not only in this case but all spin-offs from TV series) to weed out the tropes and conventions of television which 'educate' us through insightful simplifications.