{Visions of imperial transcendence }

[Redbook1:88][19691029:0000a]{Visions of imperial transcendence }[29th October 1969]

Wednesday 29th October 1969 [continued]

            For two brief and startling moments last Sunday, I saw the Sussex countryside, not as part of England, but as the centre of an Empire on which the Sun never sets.  It looked completely different; and I realised what we had lost, and what we must replace, or [we] shrink.

            To think that for so many years I thought Kipling's "Recessional" was a jingoist’s hymn!  I must have been blind.  But if anyone had pointed out [to me], as Beloff does, that it was written in 1897 on Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, I might have realised what Kipling was trying to say.

           

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