Professor David Olusoga featured on Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's bombshell Netflix documentary

A historian who was bestowed an OBE by the King has revealed he was told to reject the honour by "privileged white middle-class people".

Professor David Olusoga, 56, received the recognition on the late Queen Elizabeth II’s 2019 New Year Honours list, and was later awarded it by King Charles in 2023 for services to history and community integration.

The academic wrote Black and British: A Forgotten History, which details the links between Britain and Africa.

Speaking to Radio Times, he revealed that he accepted the award to avoid "snubbing" the country he grew up in.

"I’m often told by privileged white middle-class people that it’s a terrible thing for a black person to accept an OBE, and I think they underestimate what it means," he explained.

"It’s a different thing for somebody who is an immigrant to turn down a national honour than it is for someone who was born here."

He added: "Turning an honour down would be a snub. And I don’t want to snub a country that I became a citizen of, and which is my nation."

Prof Olusoga detailed how his upbringing and background led him to accept the late Queen's offer.

"My mother was British, but nationality is patrilineal," he continued. "When I was first in this country, I was Nigerian. I was naturalised British later in life. But we had social housing.

"I went to Liverpool University. The local education authority, for all its faults, gave me help when it diagnosed my dyslexia.

"I arrived as a little boy from Nigeria and this country, with a lot of help from my mother, invested in me."

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The historian won a Bafta in 2016 in the specialised history and factual programming category for his documentary Britain's Forgotten Slave Owners. He was later awarded a Special Award in 2023 for three decades of dedication to television and culture.

He also presented Empire, a three-part BBC series on the UK’s colonial expansion from Tudor times to the First World War, which, academic and life peer Lord Nigel Biggar told GB News, told an "overwhelmingly negative story" and raised questions over impartiality standards.

Prof Olusoga, who remains a professor of public history at the University of Manchester, featured in Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's controversial Netflix series.

Throughout the show, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex appeared to level blows towards Prince William and raised the question over the Royal Family and race - which Meghan said became "such an issue when I went to the UK".

It was here, in episodes two and three, where Prof Olusoga featured, providing context to the history of the British Empire and asked, "who has paid the cost in all of this?"

He also added there had been optimism among British people of colour when Meghan married into the family: "There was a hope maybe of having difficult conversations that have been pushed away so many times."

The professor described Harry and Meghan's romance as a "fairy tale".