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Books

Why the British make a virtue of defeat

The peculiarly British tendency to glorify disaster certainly doesn’t stem from guilt about the empire, as Stephanie Barczewski insists

20 February 2016

9:00 AM

20 February 2016

9:00 AM

Heroic Failure and the British Stephanie Barczewski

Yale, pp.266, £20, ISBN: 9780300180060

When Henry Worsley died last month attempting the first solo, unaided expedition across the Antarctic, he was 30 miles short of the finish line. He fits right in with a long British tradition of heroic failures: General Gordon killed at Khartoum; the defeat of the British by the Zulus at Isandlwana.

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