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Abstract
One component in the vote to leave the European Union was a nostalgic image of Empire and the assertion by Brexiteers like Boris Johnson that after Britain had left the EU new trade links would be made with countries who were members of the Commonwealth, countries that Britain had previously governed as colonies. The foundation for this idea was the understanding that Britain’s governing of its colonies had been benign and, indeed, that British control had brought with it the benefits of civilisation. This view of the British empire was pervasive in the UK. This article focuses on the sitcom As Time Goes By in which the male protagonist, Lionel, is writing a book about his time in Kenya in the 1950s and 1960s. Everybody who reads the ms considers it boring. Yet Kenya during those decades was subject to a grass-roots uprising against the British colonists known as Mau Mau and Kenya was granted independence in 1963 by which time large numbers of white settlers had left the country. The portrayal of Lionel’s book as boring elides this history and reinforces the perception that British colonialism was well received by the indigenous population.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. For a thoughtful, critical discussion of the role of nostalgia in the Brexit referendum see Saunders (2020).
2. For a general background to the relevance of the British empire to Brexit, see: Ward & Rasch (2019). Embers of empire in Brexit Britain. Bloomsbury Academic.
3. See: Hochschild (2019). King Leopold’s ghost: A story of greed, terror and heroism in colonial Africa. Picador.
4. See: Stratton, J. (2019). The language of leaving: Brexit, the second world war and cultural trauma. Journal for Cultural Research, 23(3), 225–251.
5. Confusingly, in the episodes Jean and Lionel refer to him being in London in August, 1954.
6. These police procedurals lacking diversity can be compared with the ethnic and racial diversity of characters in the police procedural, Vera, set just outside Newcastle upon Tyne in Tyne and Wear, which was first broadcast in 2011.
7. I would like to thank Professor David Guile who was able to identify this image for me.
8. See for example: Levin, C. (n.d.). The two Queen Elizabeths: the end of the second Elizabethan Age. The New Historia. https://thenewhistoria.org/editorial/the-two-queen-elizabeths-the-end-of-the-second-elizabethan-age/.
9. A number of British aristocrats moved to the White Highlands. Some lived a hedonistic lifestyle as portrayed in the film, White Mischief (1987).
10. Don Warrington was born in Trinidad and brought up in Newcastle upon Tyne.
11. I owe this insight to Professor Panizza Allmark.
12. Jean, shocked at Lionel’s revelation, asks if there is anything else he hasn’t told her about his time in Kenya. Lionel tells a story about a party where the wives got drunk, stripped off and went skinny-dipping in the pool. It becomes clear that Lionel is making this story up. The story’s narrative is a humorous, middle-class revisiting of the scandalous parties of the aristocrats portrayed in White Mischief. Larbey, it would seem, enjoyed here a little in-joke of his own.
13. Much detail about Saint Marie can be found on the fan site here: Death in Paradise Fandom. (n.d.) Saint Marie. https://deathinparadise.fandom.com/wiki/Saint_Marie.
14. Specifically, the detective inspectors are sent out from the London Metropolitan Police.