Ask him the right question and he just opened up huge new vistas - Idi Amin as an ‘eat more’ lunch host, though eat more what exactly, given the stories about his cannibalism; Mao as less disastrous for China than barbed-wire torturing, women-dismembering Kuomintang war lords.

What are the odds that a hugely smart Oxbridge Brit journalist was asked to ‘help out’ with a spot of ‘extra’ reporting, effectively becoming HMG’s sole ear in Kampala, while filing reports as the last remaining Brit journo in Uganda? Or is that just a low curmudgeonly suggestion? It is. But is it true? There was a pronounced pause as you brought up Short’s Uganda past - waiting for the other shoe to drop?

On the British Empire and its crimes

1. The SAS was providing military training to Pol Pot’s forces, as a continuation of the Vietnam war by other means (?). So the UK is in the frame, as well as the US, for involvement with the regime behind the Killing Fields. Did Short’s book mention a whisper of that?

2. It was a woman Harvard historian who reported the 300,000 deaths of Kikuyus at the hands of the British during the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya. What most outraged one reviewer was that the British Oxbridge historians knew all about it for fifty years. But not one breathed a single mention of it. Imperial Reckoning - Caroline Elkins -

http://www.amazon.com/Imperial-Reckoning-Untold-Story-Britains/dp/0805076530

You may get the chance to ask the right interviewee about it.

Philip Short might even be willing to provide chapter and verse for an entire program ‘Crimes of the British Empire’. Asking him to do so might tell us whether he could maintain a dry academic detachment or had a hidden ‘Queen and Country’ spirit, possibly indicating a more colourful background. The Johnny English of Cambridge?

3. Funny HaHa - John Oliver - Daily Show - on Tea Parties and how a real Empire works - “We slaughtered 30 million Indians. Mostly one a time by bayonetting them. That’s how a real Empire does it.” (paraphrased) -

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=224276&title=tea-party-tyranny

including the apology at the end

nothing as heartwarming in a kind of sad way as a john dolan apology at the end of a great interview.

a shame thou, i read your passionate articles about the omission of the british empire in investigations in world crimes. you should get him back on air to ask that question or send him a mail and post his response. don’t think he would take offence

And, of course, the best line goes to Dr Dolan: “Nothing’s really dead except for an organism–everything else can come back.”

I’m sure that Dr. Dolan now, after putting things together, realizes that he doesn’t need to grunt or mumble acknowledgement periodically during an interview to indicate that he’s still paying attention, like he does when he’s talking to a friend on the phone. I have no problems with the interrupt-to-make-a-point thing, but the “right, mmm, sure, yeah” thing is a bit distracting. At the same time, I know that’s exacerbated by the levels of those back of the phone or in-ear mic used to record the interview.

Technical nit-picking aside, I’m certainly hoping for more of these. Also, the mea culpa was entirely wonderful.