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06 January 2025. Nigel for Prospect. Demands by Caribbean nations for compensation ignore historical reality and the achievements of British abolitionism. White British involvement in Atlantic slave-trading and slavery for over a century-and-a-half up to the early 1800s amounted to “the Black Holocaust, the British genocide”, according to Sir Hilary Beckles, historian, vice-chancellor of the…
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17 December 2024. Nigel for The Australian. Throughout the English-speaking world elites are falling over them- selves to believe the very worst of their own countries. Let’s consider Canada. In May 2021 an Indian band in Kamloops, British Columbia claimed ground- penetrating radar had discovered “soil disturbances” that evidenced unmarked graves containing the remains of…
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26 October 2024. By Nigel Biggar for The Australian. Republicans object to Australia’s hereditary monarchy, partly because it’s foreign and partly because it’s a medieval absurdity stranded in a modern, democratic age. If that were so—and if I were Australian—I’d object, too. But it’s not true. While Australia has long been an independent state, and…
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19 October 2024. By Nigel Biggar for The Australian. The version below was originally given on 14 October 2024 as an address to St Mary-le-Bow Church, London, on the occasion of the birth of Admiral Arthur Phillip. I Did Admiral Arthur Phillip spearhead the invasion of Aboriginal Australia? While an annual commemoration of his birth…
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19 August 2024. An essay History has always been contested. The indubitable facts may provide firm common ground, but how to make sense of them, which ones to foreground and which to marginalize, how to distribute the weight of significance among them, and above all how to evaluate them morally will always be a matter…
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6 August 2024. By Nigel for the Daily Express. None of the reasons for returning to Athens the sculptures known as the ‘Elgin Marbles’ adds up. The historical reason – theft – is untrue. The sculptures originally adorned the Parthenon, which was used by the Ottomans as a military base for centuries. In 1687 a…
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4 August 2024. By Nigel for The Spectator. Sir Keir Starmer’s government looks ready to smile upon the British Museum’s apparent desire to by-pass the legal prohibition of the return of the Elgin Marbles to Athens by negotiating a ‘long-term loan’ instead. Since Greece believes that the Marbles were stolen, that ‘loan’ is bound to…
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13 June 2024. By Nigel for The Spectator. Three weeks ago, I received an SOS from a distressed citizen of Glasgow, urging me to protest against a recently installed display at the Kelvingrove Museum, ‘Glasgow – City of Empire’. Predictably, the exhibition falls over itself to clock every conceivable association between the city and slavery,…
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31 May 2024. Nigel for the Daily Mail. The heroics of HMS Black Joke, a Royal Navy clipper that waged a fearless five-year war to put an end to the slave trade, are worthy of a Hollywood action movie. She was once a slave ship herself, sailing under the Brazilian flag and known as the…
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28 May 2024. Philippa Macinnes, Museum Manager,Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum Dear Ms Macinnes, I am writing to register a protest against the travesty of history represented by the display in the Kelvingrove Museum entitled, “Glasgow—City of Empire”. I do not object to your museum’s communication of discreditable and lamentable truths about the history of…