An Introduction…

Farewell the Trumpets…

2. My people…

3. The origins…

4. They were uniquely…

5. There were few…

6. Still the public…

Chapter 2: An Explorer in Difficulties

2. Britain's was not…

3. The day after…

4. This engaging…

5. The British also…

Chapter 3: Following the Flags

2. There was hardly…

3. There was no escaping it…

4. And if to the public…

Languages especially…

5. Behind this…

For by now…

6. Yet if there was…

7. It was too late anyway

8. Chamberlain never…

Chapter 4: The Life We Always Lead

2. The British and the Boers…

3. On the face of it…

4. As Buller sailed…

5. Let us peer…

6. For a very different battlefield…

7. Two British failures…

8. For the saddest…

9. 'Say, colonel,'…

10. It was a war of striking…

11. It was a bitter war…

For though the propagandists…

12. The Queen died…

Chapter 5: The Wearying Titan

2. The scale of the Empire…

3. The spectacle…

4. For the first time…

5. Even more significantly…

6. There were also…

7. These were no more…

Chapter 6: Two Grandees

2. To understand…

At home Curzon…

This was the romantic view…

3. Curzon responded…

4. Out of his time…

5. Our second grandee…

6. But Milner was…

If reason led Milner to war…

7. They were not contended…

8. Yet it would be wrong…

9. Two late grandees…

Chapter 7: A Late Aggression

2. For generations…

3. He chose as his…

4. The first part of the plan…

5. Tibet had been invaded…

6. In fact it progressed slowly…

7. The barricade was nothing…

8. To Lord Curzon…

9. 'I question,'…

10. Younghusband had not…

Chapter 8: On Power

2. Far in the east…

3. The great men of Hong Kong…

4. There was a caravanserai feeling…

5. Far away, and even more explicit…

6. It all looked down to the Fleet…

7. Such, many times multiplied…

At the same time…

8. They were just in time…

Chapter 9: The First War

2. The Bugles of England…

3. The Turkish possession…

4. The British field commander…

5. Yet before another six months…

The siege itself…

6. London took over…

7. They were devious…

It had been agreed…

8. But of the three…

9. The Navy itself…

When the Turkish gunners…

10. Fisher resigned…

It was before he embarked…

11. It was to be…

But it was Magersfontein again…

12. The Gallipoli campaign…

13. In hideous attack…

14. General Hamilton…

The British public…

15. Many imperial instincts…

Part 2: The Purpose Falters 1918–1939

2. The British Empire had more…

3. But it was only a spasm…

4. The peace treaty was signed…

5. In September 1922…

6. Though the Empire…

Chapter 11: A First and a Last Blow

2. She was a collier…

3. There was nothing haphazard to it…

Across the water…

4. This was the inflammatory…

5. In the south…

6. Two remarkable…

The setting was lovely…

7. Few of them expected…

8. The significance of the Easter Rising…

9. Irish men and Irish women…

10. During the fighting…

11. The Ulster Volunteer Force…

Chapter 12: The Anglo-Arabs

2. For centuries…

3. Their chosen vessels…

In fact they did not…

4. For it was to prove…

5. When Allenby resumed…

6. Among those most deeply affected…

None of the new territories…

7. This was a little forlorn…

8. Among and around…

9. For a couple of decades…

10. We will take a journey…

By the evening…

11. They are sad scenes…

Chapter 13: A Muddled Progress

2. This was the tragedy of Amritsar…

3. We last saw Gandhi…

He was an Anglophile…

4. Gandhi recognised…

5. The course of events…

6. It was not enough for Gandhi…

Dandi was the simplest possible place…

7. Again he was not there long…

The agreement they reached…

8. Later in the year…

9. The longer the British stalled…

On one level of thought…

Chapter 14: Sweet, Just, Boyish Masters

2. The most lavish exercise…

3. It was difficult to remember…

4. In the field…

5. India was lost anyway…

Furse had got a third at Oxford…

6. The imperialists were undismayed…

7. They never gave up…

8. Still the Empire proceeded…

Perhaps the last true expression…

Chapter 15: Britishness

2. To most Britons at home…

3. By now the greatest cities…

More insidious still…

4. Britishness had mutated…

Like most gold-rush towns…

5. So the Dominions diverged…

6. No wonder King George V…

7. New realities…

8. It soon began to happen…

Chapter 16: On Technique

It was Lord Thompson…

2. The R101 had hit a low hill…

This then was the truth…

3. By and large…

4. The greatest bridge…

5. Dams were another…

The Aswan Dam…

6. These were traditional concerns…

7. As to the air…

All this was a far cry…

8. It did not come naturally…

Chapter 17: Art Forms

2. Between the wars…

3. There was an imperial folklore…

British film-makers…

4. Some of the Imperial settlements…

Bombay was a picture…

5. The institutional art…

The setting was solemn…

It was bigger than Versailles…

6. But epic, never quite…

Chapter 18: Stylists

2. In Kenya was Lord Delamere…

3. They were a small community…

4. In London was Frederick John Dealtry Lugard…

It was as a kind of prefect…

5. In Cyprus there was Ronald Storrs…

It was not that the British were unpopular…

6. In South Africa was Jan Christian Smuts…

7. There were others, of course…

Chapter 19: Memsahibs and Others

2. Yet out of the generalisations…

3. Several great women travellers…

4. And most remarkable of all was Gertrude Bell…

Chapter 20: Adventurers

2. Some Englishmen still went to be pioneers…

3. This was an adventure of an organic kind…

At another extreme…

For self-doubt…

4. The most emblematic adventure…

There they sprawl now…

5. So long as the Raj lasted in India…

Part 3: Farewell the Trumpets 1939–1965

2. This time it was unmistakeably an imperial war…

But the British…

3. Without her equivocal allies…

4. It was in this crowded…

Here was a return to form…

5. The Middle East never did fall…

Yet the Maltese…

6. Most thrilling of all…

7. No such inspiriting epic…

The Australians and New Zealanders…

8. It was not all dishonour…

9. The next edition…

10. One by one, as the war progressed…

The full meaning of the last war…

Chapter 22: The Heirs Assemble

2. The Americans viewed…

In the Far East…

3. A more baleful view of the Empire…

4. Anyway, the groundswell of discontent…

5. The blindest observers…

Chapter 23: 1947

2. Since the constitution of 1935…

3. Many of the British…

4. The knot was worse than the Gordian…

5. Presently he was sacked…

Mountbatten's relations with the three leaders…

6. 'Plan Balkan'…

7. 'The wheels of fate'…

Every week…

Chapter 24: The Last Rally

2. They rationalised the Commonwealth…

The Indians had decided…

3. But we must narrow our focus…

Money was poured into the estate…

4. It never happened of course…

Chapter 25: The Last Retreat

2. It was in Palestine…

But by 1947…

3. Palestine was a declaration…

4. Far more often though…

5. One by one they went…

6. Sometimes sceptically…

But just or no…

Port Said had never been beautiful…

Chapter 26: On the Beach

2. Let us end the story gently…

3. Muscat was one such place…

It was a lovely house…

4. Mauritius was another relic…

5. Far, far away…

The climate was awful…

6. Across the old Empire…

7. But the passion was spent…

Chapter 27: Younghusband had not…

2. Of all the charges of Empire…

Soon the old colonial empire…

3. Churchill died, and it died with him…

4. But most of them…

5. The end of it was not surprising…

Envoi