With all the talk about “decolonising” university curricula (see http://thoughtleader.co.za/bertolivier/2016/03/23/decolonisation-the-new-ideology/), which has again cropped up among the demands of the protesting students, I thought it might be productive to remind students and academic staff alike of one of the most eloquent – in fact, together with Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, exemplary – critical literary […]
British Empire
Posted inNews/Politics
Olympic opening: More Little Britain than Great Britain
Glorious traditions, like beauty, are in the eye of the beholder. When some chinless member of the British aristocracy was expounding on the ‘glorious traditions’ of the Royal Navy, the riposte – often incorrectly attributed to Winston Churchill, once First Lord of the Admiralty – was, ‘What glorious traditions? The traditions of the Royal Navy […]