Edinburgh International Book Festival: Jeremy Paxman

Jeremy Paxman is like the teacher you didn’t want to mess with at school. His audience sat up straight and paid attention as he delivered a lesson on the history of the British Empire. Using a selection of arresting photographs and paintings, Paxman set out to show that the Empire, which today is regarded by most as an archaic joke, still has a profound influence. The Empire, he said, is why the UK still has a seat on the United Nations Security Council; it colours Britain’s relationship with Europe and it’s one of the reasons why prime ministers continue to send British troops to places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

“How we feel about the rest of the world is tied up in our imperial history,” Paxman argues. In a fifty-minute dash across that imperial history, he demonstrates that the British Empire was not a project-managed affair. In fact, says Paxman, Britain relied on get-rich-quick plunderers such as Robert Clive and Henry Morgan to acquire bits of the world for their own wealth, then consolidated British rule by installing local royalty. Opposition, such as the Indian Mutiny, was arbitrarily stamped on to show exactly who was boss, and figures such as David Livingstone and General Gordon were held up as martyrs to give the Empire a civilising moral mission.

Paxman insists that in some ways British rule was a force for good, notably in suppressing the slave trade. Responding to a question from the audience wondering why Britain retains its remaining outposts of Empire, Paxman put the choice starkly: either you continue to allow places like the Falkland Islands to make UK foreign policy, or you forcibly ship the inhabitants out of the territory. It was another reminder that, while the Empire might be dead, the legacy lives on. [James Carson]