James Boyce

Join James Boyce to discuss his book Imperial Mud, a masterfully argued reimagination of not just the history of the Fens, but the history and identity of the English people.

WINNER OF THE HISTORY AND TRADITION CATEGORY, EAST ANGLIAN BOOK AWARDS 2020
LONGLISTED FOR THE RSL ONDAATJE PRIZE 2021

Between the English Civil Wars and the mid-Victorian period, the proud indigenous population of the Fens fought to preserve their homeland against an expanding empire. After centuries of resistance, their culture and community were destroyed, along with their wetland home – England’s last lowland wilderness. But this was no simple triumph of technology over nature – it was the consequence of a newly centralised and militarised state, which enriched the few while impoverishing the many.

In this colourful and evocative history, James Boyce brings to life not only colonial masters such as Oliver Cromwell and the Dukes of Bedford but also the defiant ‘Fennish’ themselves and their dangerous and often bloody resistance to the enclosing landowners. We learn of the eels so plentiful they became a kind of medieval currency; the games of ‘Fen football’ that were often a cover for sabotage of the drainage works; and the destruction of a bountiful ecosystem that had sustained the Fennish for thousands of years and which meant that they did not have to submit in order to survive.

‘A real page-turner … a warning about what happens when the rich and powerful dress up their avarice as “progress” – a lesson we could do with learning today.’ Dixe Wills, BBC Countryfile magazine

At long last we’re delighted to welcome James for an event that holds up a mirror to the place we call home. He’s a multi-award-winning Australian historian. His first book, Van Diemen’s Land, was described by Richard Flanagan as ‘the most significant colonial history since The Fatal Shore‘. 1835: The Founding of Melbourne and the Conquest of Australia was The Age‘s Book of the Year, while Born Bad: Original Sin and the Making of the Western World was hailed by The Washington Post as ‘an exhilarating work of popular scholarship’.