The Oldie

The Battle over the British Empire

It is more than 60 years since Dean Acheson, the former US Secretary of State, told an audience at West Point Military Academy that ‘Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role’.

One role that we do seem to have embraced wholeheartedly since then is discussing that empire.

Much of that discussion turns on the question of whether the British Empire was a good thing or a bad thing. In Oxford,

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