Reparations

Nigel Biggar, CBE is Lord Biggar of Castle Douglas and Emeritus Regius Professor of Moral Theology at the University of Oxford. Described as ‘one of the leading living Western ethicists’ (John Gray, New Statesman), he was appointed Commander of the British Empire for services to higher education in the 2021 Queen’s Birthday Honours list and named one of Prospect magazine’s Top Thinkers of 2024. In January 2025 he entered the House of Lords as a Conservative peer. He is the author of the bestselling Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning.

‘It’s the word on the lips, and in the ears, of every institution with colonial money in its past – but, argues Biggar, a theologian and historian, the demands for “reparations” are born of lazy group-think, not serious inquiry. Activists everywhere ought to read this polemic, and start again’ - Telegraph Books of the Year