Historian Corinne Fowler brings rural life and colonial rule together, sharing the ways in which the British Empire transformed rural lives, offering opportunity and seeking exploitation. She shows how the booming profits of overseas colonial activities directly contributed to enclosure, land clearances and dispossession in the UK, and how these histories continue to have an impact. Fowler’s most recent book is Our Island Stories: Country Walks through Colonial Britain, and she is Professor of Colonialism and Heritage in Museum Studies at the University of Leicester. She co-authored the 2021 National Trust report on its country houses’ historical links to the British Empire, and is also author of Green Unpleasant Land: Creative Responses to Rural England’s Colonial Connections. She talks to Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, author and Professor of Human Rights and Political Philosophy at Birkbeck University, London.