Can history really be cancelled?

13th July 2026

Okay, it’s time for a rant.

I think it’s fair to describe my lifelong politics as centre left. I would probably describe myself as a a democratic socialist. I could not, in anyway, be construed as some right wing nutjob (some say you get more right wing with age, with me it’s probably slightly the other way around thinking about it.)

However, at the risk of being judged as some old Gammon, some of the rhetoric from the modern generation of the progressive left, excuse my French, just boils my piss. Some of the stuff being said about people who have been dead over a century is, in my opinion, nowt short of moronic.

As point of case let’s take protagonists i have recently written about in Kipling and Lawrence. Now i appreciate Rudyard was quite pally with Cecil Rhodes who, not without some justification, is as popular with the younger generation as Pol Pot. Yes, such writings as “The White Mans Burden” were, with hindsight, not his greatest moment, but some of the vitriol recently thrown at Rudyard, for me, like some of them throwing it, does not seem to wash! The main points seem totally lost on them, you can’t judge someone in 2026 by what they did or said in 1886 with the same eyes (and ears) it makes no sense whatsoever. I am sure one or two things they are posting online today will be seen in a completely different light in 2126 and they would be beside themselves with guilt.

Kipling was a literary genius, to this day he remains the youngest laureate to be bestowed the Nobel Prize for literature. Yes he was a cheerleader for the British Empire but how could he have been anything else? He was a product of that Empire, born in Bombay in its epicentre the bloke knew nothing else in his lifetime! He paid a heavy price for that jingoistic fervour, his son John, failing not only one but two medicals for the army (being as blind as a bat) his father having a word with Lord Roberts resulting in a commission in the Irish Guards and being killed at the tender age of 18 at the battle of Loos. Rudyand had to live with that, i am sure whatever some undergrad called Arabella has to throw at him today over the Empire would not even register. For all the accusations he was a bigot and a racist i would say that anyone who could write the line “you’re a better man than i am gunga din” in 1890, again given the attitudes of that time, more than answers that one for me.

Another one that i only heard about this week (even though it hit the news in January apparently) is the National Portrait Gallery adding a “trigger warning” to images of TE Lawrence in Arab dress due to cultural appropriation. Now i know the aforementioned Gen Z warrior may have kittens in the gallery at sight of it but this is nothing more than pure ignorance. Thomas did not wake one morning and think you know what i fancy wearing a Thobe today, those robes were given to him by Emir Faisal (a blood descendent of the Prophet no less). A huge honour and would have been nothing short of an insult to a British ally in the war. But even ignoring this, let’s just say you are Lawrence charging down on the Turks with your Arab forces at Abu Lissan would you wish to be a Turkish sniper magnet with a neon sign over your head in British Officer uniform, or blend in with the 50 other riders around you? That is not cultural appropriation you muppet, that is self presevation and good old common sense! Of course he adapted Arab dress!

However it did make me chuckle that Lord Byron has the same trigger warning for wearing Albanian dress. Lord Byron!!! Of the multitude of things this lad got up to i would have thought, say, knocking off your half sister was a little more of a trigger magnet than cosplaying an Albanian! If you did not laugh, as they say….

So on they go, toppling statues and changing street names. If you want to totally expunge all trace of slavery, for example, you going to have to flatten the likes of Liverpool and Glasgow in their entirety! George Santayana famously wrote that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Don’t rip it down, add a descriptive plaque! Its not difficult!

Rant over.