This book took me a long time to read, and with good reason - it is heavy stuff. Elkins still manages to keep the book engaging though, communicating fact after brutal fact without becoming too dry.

It is brutal though. I had to take a bit of time after reading this book to collect my thoughts about it into something more coherent.

Overall, I would say this book has me feeling more scorn than ever for British patriotism. Not the kind where someone is simply proud of where they from, but the more toxic kind where people see Great Britain as somehow superior to other countries. This book shows that is simply not true, especially when combined with other historical accounts of colonialism it shows that we have our dark patches in history like any other country, and that those patches are very dark indeed.

The very fact that camps like those described in the books could even be considered so soon after the Nazi concentration camps of World War Two is hard to believe. The terrifying level of coverup and national apathy surrounding the Kenyan situation left me feeling cold. It makes me wonder about what could be going on in the world now, what terrible things we might be reading about in another 50 years time that are happening right now.

Overall, a historically important, well-written and thought-provoking read.