It made imperial Britain's military men look so hatefully arrogant to the rest of the world that the Empire was doomed.

These were the authentic reactions of an imperial Britain to a land which covered its transit routes to the Indian empire.

A sprawling, brilliantly comic satire of imperial Britain and the Raj.

But the end of the war also led to the end of Britain's imperial "commitment."

Obviously, it is not destined to undergo precisely the same experience as, say, imperial Britain or the Soviet Union.

It is not an ending, any more than was imperial Britain's exit from its African colonies.

Sokoto largely stuck to the old ways, and met its end in 1903 at the hands of imperial Britain.

He quotes The Economist: "America is increasingly looking like imperial Britain."

It wouldn't be a clean break, whoever decides it is time for imperial Britain to call it a day.