Empire - Season 1 (2012)

Paxman asks how a tiny island in the North Atlantic came to rule over a quarter of the world's population. He travels to India, where local soldiers and local maharajahs helped a handful of British traders to take over vast areas of land. Spectacular displays of imperial power dazzled the local peoples and developed a cult of Queen Victoria as Empress, mother and virtual God. In Egypt, Paxman explores Britain as a temporary peace-keeper whose visit turned into a seventy year occupation. He travels to the desert where Lawrence of Arabia is still remembered by elder ...

Paxman continues his story of Britain's empire by looking at how traders, conquerors and settlers spread the British way of life around the world by creating a very British home. Beginning in India where early traders wore Indian costume and took Indian wives and their descendants still look fondly on their mixed heritage which in Victorian Britain was frowned upon as inter racial mixing became taboo. In Singapore he visits a club, now open to all, where British colonials used to gather together, in Canada he finds a town of Scottish ancestry whose inhabitants proud ...

Paxman traces the growth of a peculiarly British type of hero - adventurer, gentleman, amateur, sportsman and decent chap and the British obsession with sport. He travels to East Africa in the following Victorian explorers searching for the source of the Nile; to Khartoum in Sudan to tell the story of General Gordon, and to Hong Kong where the British indulged their passion for horse racing by building a spectacular race course and to Jamaica where the greatest imperial game of all cricket became a battleground for racial equality when the West Indies formerly always ...