The History Racket

The History Racket
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ANDREW LOWNIE (PICTURE ON COVER PAGE) BLOWS THE WHISTLE ON THE HISTORY RACKET TO PETER JUKES AND HARDEEP MATHARU who explore the real threats to history – emanating not from ‘wokeists’ intent on rewriting the past but an establishment elite regularly burying inconvenient truths to maintain Britain’s mythic narratives.

He seems embedded at the heart of the British establishment. His house nestles in the Georgian back streets behind Parliament, close to the precincts of Westminster Abbey and the network of right-wing libertarian think tanks on Tufton Street. His father was a judge and the portrait of his wife’s grandfather, General Sir Archibald Ritchie, who led the 26th Brigade in the 9th (Scottish) Division at the Battle of the Somme, stares out imperiously above his desk.

But literary agent and historian Andrew Lownie now finds himself on the wrong side of Britain’s official history. He has become a rebel against a system which, in his eyes, consistently and deliberately censors and distorts our national past.

While the last decade or so of online propaganda wars have exposed the ‘information operations’ of digital data firms and state-sponsored cyber warriors, Lownie is fighting – at huge personal expense – against a more insidious form of manipulation: that of our fusty national archives.