Letter: Balanced history

Jenny Balfour Paul
Wednesday 02 February 2005 01:02 GMT
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Sir: Yasmin Alibhai-Brown's "Better to ban history than teach supremacy" (Opinion, 31 January) depressingly demonstrates how impossible it is to have a balanced view.

It is perfectly understandable given her own family history, yet I have Indian friends who don't share her bitterness, and recently met a Sudanese dissident who harked back longingly to a time when his country was more fairly ruled - by the British rather than his own near-genocidal government.

Ms Alibhai Brown's claim that "it has become offensive to remind people of the atrocities and inequalities of the British Empire" is untrue. Over the past decade or two most writers have bent over backwards to do exactly that. Good history teaching should surely portray both sides, but will that ever happen?

JENNY BALFOUR PAUL

Crediton, Devon

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