BBC TV Magazine: The British Empire

Hard to imagine that a vast and great continent like India was once ruled by an aristocratic ruling class of around only two-thousand British civil servants. But indeed it was and these gentleman ruffians were extremely well adjusted to a forgotten order of stuffy etiquette,  excessive socialising and consistent self gratification of  their own egos.

A friend gave me this classic issue of a BBC TV magazine from a relatively long-running series called ‘ The British Empire’. The publications are fairly collectable as ephemera, partly due to its nostalgic imperialist content but also because the facts are presented comprehensively with large (and sometimes rare) photographs and illustrations. The magazine was created as a joint venture between the BBC, Orbis and TimeLife Books sometime in the early 1970′s and it was intended as a digestible coffee table magazine to accompany the BBC’s growing print output.

I love reading about history from a publication that is already itself dated and ‘The British Empire’ feels exactly like that. The language and also the approach somehow reflects the grim conservative era it was published in. I wonder what the public reception would be like if the BBC followed this method today. Indeed, compare it to today’s more progressive ‘shared’ approach to online history content and the differences become obvious. The sun has set on this type of TV magazine and although there’s nothing beautiful about them as pieces of print, I do rather enjoy all the salutary nostalgia and absurdity they offer.