Notes on 'All-Consuming Fire'

Andy Lane, Doctor Who: All-Consuming Fire (1994)

I was going to read this eventually.

- All-Consuming Fire is the 27th in a series of novels known as the 'Virgin New Adventures'. Between June 1991 and May 1997, a total of 61 novels were published, which continue the adventures of Sylvester McCoy's Doctor from the end of the classic series. It was cancelled in the wake of the TV movie co-produced with a number of American companies and starring Paul McGann. The BBC then took the fiction in house for a line of 'Eighth Doctor Adventures' lasting until June 2005, when that was also cancelled in the wake of the revised series. Between 1997 and 2005, they managed a total of 70 volumes. From what I've been able to gather from the various blogs and sites I hang around, although they featured some of the same writers, for a number of reasons, the 'Virgin New Adventures' were generally superior to the succeeding line. A high watermark for fiction spun off from a science fiction franchise (a low bar to clear, admittedly).

- There were also lines of 'Missing' and 'Past Doctor' adventures, short story collections, and other fiction lines. With the new series, we have a new line of fiction in a different trade dress again. It's all archived on Wikipedia, but still, faced with what must be well over two hundred books by this point, one has to wonder where to start.

- This wasn't a problem when I was a child, devouring 'Target' novelisations, most of which were written by Terrence Dicks, a man whose debt to child literacy in this country is for most part completely overlooked. Despite the fact that it was obviously exactly the sort of thing I would love, I adamantly refused to watch Doctor Who when I was a child, in the belief that it was too frightening for me. It was only because I switched on the TV after the credits had finished that I found myself watching what I now know was the final episode of Sylvester McCoy's serial 'Remembrance of the Daleks'. As it was the last episode, I missed the first sight of a Dalek flying. In addition, since it was the last episode, I can't have had any real idea about what was going on. Still, I was caught up in it, in the movement of events, and the sense that this was important. I loved it.

- Sylvester McCoy is 'my' Doctor as we say, and the aesthetic which was applied to the classic show in it's final years by then script editor Andrew Cartmell and the writers he brought on board became my default for how the Doctor Who should be. More than that actually, it was hugely formative in the development of my own taste. It was something I'd discovered for myself, and helped create a fascination with work that was difficult, strange, political, or surreal. I'm not sure how much of that influence has shown in what I've chosen to write about on this blog. There have been other formative influences, both before and since.

- The series ended the following year, so the 'Target' novelisations quickly became my source for a Doctor Who fix. Both my local and school libraries were well stocked - this was back in the days when such things still existed - and I read as many as I could find. As they no doubt were for many others, they were a means of discovering all that had happened in the past. It's only as an adult that I've finally seen as television programs some of the stories I read as a child. For me, initially at least, Doctor Who was something primarily textual, discovered through books, rather than something televisual. In prose, I found I preferred Tom Baker and Patrick Troughton's Doctors over John Pertwee or Peter Davison. Goodness knows what was surviving of their performances to cause that feeling. Perhaps it was the stories.

- The only one of the 'Virgin New Adventures' I read when it came out was Mark Gatiss' Nightshade, from early on in the range. I became interested in other things after that and largely forgot about Doctor Who. It became something to be embarrassed about ever having liked. I wanted to be serious and read things that were realistic. Not realising then the problems inherent in applying realism to fantastical material.

- The crucial difference between the novels produced to tie in to the new series, is that, like that old 'Target' books, they appear to be consciously marketed towards and written for a young audience. The fiction that appeared between 1991 and 2005 was marketed at an 'adult' audience. We need scare quotes there because 'adult' can also encompass things which, whilst they might be unsuitable for children, are also rather adolescent, so not exactly 'adult'. From what I understand, and on the basis of the few I've now read, some very fine science-fiction/fantasy novels were produced in all of the various lines.

- It's not just books, there are also audio adventures and comic strips, and spin off series from the spin offs, and goodness knows what else. If you're coming back to Doctor Who at a later date, and want to explore beyond the television show, where do you start? At the beginning? I noted above that the 'Virgin New Adventures' are seen by many people as a high watermark of this type of fiction. That's their reputation at least. Individual books though, are going to be of variable quality. Owing to a combination of Virgin's admirable policy of looking for new writers (because they're cheap), low rates of pay, and the need to produce a considerable amount of material against what I presume would be fairly tight deadlines, some of these 61 works of fiction will turn inevitably out to be crap.

- Good or bad, most writers on Virgin's series appear to have started out as fans, with little prior writing experience (at least as professional authors). That so many turned out to be capable writers, that several of them have have managed to sustain substantial writing careers beyond their start with Virgin, should perhaps be considered something of a minor miracle. But it's also a testament to the talent that was present in that generation of fans. Most of it seems to be formula fiction of one type or another - Paul Cornell has written for Marvel and DC comics, Andy Lane has produced a series of 'Young Sherlock Holmes' stories - but whatever. Formula fiction is capable of greatness, given a talented author. And in any case: I'm reading fiction which was spun off from a children's science fiction show here. There's no need to be sniffy.

- Granted, some of the TV show was also pretty ropey. There seem to be few stories which are outright hated by everyone, but that's less of a concern in any case. I'm happy to devote a few hours of my life to a film or television serial which is a bit rubbish, but I have less patience with novels. They take a little longer to get through, especially if they're not very well written. This isn't just a question of taste. I've read Sax Rohmer and Ian Flemming, for instance. But I find it almost physically difficult to read something which is too badly written. And faced with 61 books? Or with over 200 if I try and take it all in? I'll just focus on the highlights, thanks. Thankfully there are more than enough fan sites and reviews to help me guide my choices.

- By this point in the 'New Adventures', the Doctor is accompanied by Ace and Bernice Summers. Bernice was introduced in Paul Cornell's Love and War. She was a sufficiently successful character that following the loss of the Doctor Who licence in 1997, Virgin continued the 'New Adventures' with Bernice as the lead character for a further 23 novels. She continues to feature in audios and novels to this day. In All-Consuming Fire she shares the role of narrator with Watson.

- The Doctor is a character who unquestionably has his roots in the kind of imperialist adventure fiction of which Sherlock Holmes is a part.

- A quote:

"The [Doctor] is represented as a restoration of the traditional colonial hero. Even his costumes - Edwardian frock-coats or cricket whites, smoking jackets or Bohemian garb - recall the period of the height of British imperial power. He's presented as the ideal of colonial liberalism: an objective, asexual saviour-explorer - a scientist whose only greed is for knowledge - a man who's out neither for himself nor for a bit of the Other - a post-gendered gunless wonder - an upper-middle-class eccentric licensed by the establishment - a revolutionary who can't change history..." 

Alec Charles, 'The Ideology of Anachronism: Television, History and the Nature of Time', Time and Relative Dimensions on Space, ed. David Butler

- All-Consuming Fire isn't even the first time that the characters of the Doctor and Sherlock Holmes have been juxtaposed.

And just in case we've forgotten this famous television story, on ethat's beloved by a certain generation of fans, All-Consuming Fire includes several references to characters and situations from The Talons of Weng-Chiang. Watson encounters Tom Baker's doctor in his Victorian garb in a dream. The 7th Doctor is currently staying with Professor Litefoot. A previous, untold adventure for Holmes and Watson saw them encounter the 'Walking Ventriloquist's Dummy'.

- It's an obvious idea. Only a couple of months later, John Peel's 'Missing Adventure' Evolution would team up with Arthur Conan Doyle and apparently inspire the creation of Holmes. I understand that it's not a very good book, but I love the idea of a self contradictory fictional universe in which Sherlock Holmes both is and isn't real. Holmes and Watson appear in a later 'New Adventure' and several other spin offs. The 2008 audio adventure The Adventure of the Diogenes Damsel is apparently something of a sequel to All-Consuming Fire, but I've not listened to it myself.

- In it's first half the novel is essentially an effective Conan Doyle pastiche into which the destabilising worlds of Doctor Who and Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos are intruding. Employed by the Pope (!), Holmes and Watson are investigating the theft of several forbidden books which have been stolen from the secret library of St John the Beheaded. These books tell of mythical beasts and gateways to other worlds. The trail leads them to India and the villainous Baron Maupertius, whose plan is explicitly linked with imperial conquest. For the last third of the novel, the novel shifts to the alien planet of Ry'leh. The alien landscape is fairly well imagined, but it's a far less compelling place compared to the Victorian London of the novel's first half.

- Andy Lane is clearly proud of his research. Right at the end, in an epilogue, Ace and Bernice question the Doctor about some of the aspects of Victorian London that Watson mentions in his narrative such as, for example, the presence of strychnine in beer. Yes, the Doctor assures them, it was all true. It has the distinct feeling of an author patting himself on the back. But, to be fair, these details taken from research into the period also gives the sections of the novel set on earth a texture which is lacking in sections set on what is, after all, a made up place.

- It's a version of Barthes' 'reality effect' that's probably common to a lot of historical fiction. Details create the world. One of the eternal problem for any writer of fiction set in the past must surely be the issue of research. How to introduce enough detail into the narrative to convince that the fiction is set in the past without overwhelming that reader with excessive detail, or without it appearing too obviously as research, not fully enclosed in the narrative. Having a native of the period narrate is certainly one way of solving the problem, although of course they're not necessarily going to notice the kind of details that we would. Vithal Rajan can have Watson notice all sort of historical details about India because he's a visitor to the country where much is new to him. In All-Consuming Fire Watson appears to be discovering a social conscience in order that Holmes may lecture him on the condition of the lower classes. It doesn't quite work, but it's a good effort. Later in the novel, once he's encountered Ace and Bernice, Watson compares them to the women of his own time. Unfortunately he seems to be thinking more of the women of modern Victorian cliche rather than what they may have actually been like. Is seems that Andy Lane's research only goes so far.

- It's also a very textual world. Poe's detective Auguste Dupin is fictional, but otherwise this is a world in which fictional characters mingle with reality. The references to Doctor Who's past includes Redvers Fenn-Cooper from the 7th Doctor story Ghost Light. From Holmes' adventures we have Inspector Lestrade (alongside Inspector Aberline and Walter Dew) and the giant rat of Sumatra. There is also Fu Manchu; the lost dictionary of the Khazars (alongside a reference to Fermat's last theorem; it was published in 1994 after all); a smart missile from Iain Banks' culture series; Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger is out of the country but John Roxton puts in an appearance in India; Charles Beauregard is present at the Diogenes Club (and Mack "the Knife' Yeovil feels like it could be a reference to Kim Newman's pseudonym, as well as The Threepenny Opera). It's not as densely referenced as Newman's work, but resides in the same ballpark. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was still a few years in the future.

- There's a wonderful sense of plenitude present in all of these works. Narrative plenitude. That's something I need to think some more about.

- The pastiche even extends to the inclusion of illustrations. This calls back to the way in which Sherlock Holmes was first published, in the Strand magazine, with illustrations. It also alludes to the 'Target' novels, which similarly came with illustrations. Unfortunately, they're not actually very good.

- Placing Sherlock Holmes and the Doctor together in a narrative which also takes them to imperial India is a fairly explicit attempt to confront the unpleasant aspects of that narrative tradition. Unfortunately, as Philip Sandifer has already pointed out on his blog, Andy Lane's attempts to do so really amount to little more than excessive liberal hand ringing and piety. For Sandifer it "feels like [the novel]’s trying to pay lip service to the fact that Victorian England was a deeply and horrifyingly flawed culture mostly so that it can enjoy the trappings of the culture in peace."

- Sandifer of course, appears unable to see Empire as anything other than it's accumulated imperialist horror and oppression and "scarred over wounds". Which isn't a terribly inaccurate judgement, if perhaps a little simplistic.

- Andy Lane's fiction revels in the trappings of a culture of whose worst parts he purports to disdain. He achieves this latter by having the Doctor, Ace and Bernice make thumpingly unsubtle comments about the evils of empire and colonialist expansion. As another commentator to Philip Sandifer's post points out, however reasonable some of the comments they make might be, it's done so awkwardly that they end up coming across as insufferably smug and self righteous individuals. When for example, Watson makes a point about how impressive the Suez canal is, the Doctor responds with an unpleasant rant about the small minded nature of 19th century imperialism. It's not just that this is a needlessly unpleasant response to an innocent remark that the journey to India has been made shorter by the canal (which is just a fact, whatever your feelings about 19th century imperialism). It's also problematic because the Doctor's method of putting Watson in his place by arguing that other cultures made the same achievement only ends up praising the acts of older empires of antiquity. Imperialism is fine it appears, when it's ancient and not perpetrated by the English.

- It's also not helped by the fact that Bernice is just a little bit racist. In her parts of the narrative, she first complains about the heat of India, and the smell, which is apparently worse than that experienced on any alien planet that she's ever visited. Which isn't wrong exactly. The heat was certainly the first thing I noticed when I stepped off the plane for my first visit (but then it was also the beginning of summer). But it's all so unsubtle: that's what everyone first notices! She also compares lower caste Indians to unfortunate accident victims, and the crowds about their trains in rail stations to cockroaches. Lovely.

- In Bernice's potted history of the country (unsurprisingly, she thinks it's a huge place - an oft encountered cliche), she mixes up Hindu and Muslim strictures about food. As Philip Sandifer rightly points out, an error such as this takes on a greater significance in the context of a novel which is also obsessed with pointing out the evils of imperialism. It undermines the point you're trying to make when you can't be bothered to get a simple thing right such as the fact that Hindus don't eat beef and Muslims don't eat pork.

- It could be an innocent error. These things do happen. Yet it appears in a book where Watson also casually claims that "Most Indian rulers are either Hindu or Muslim," as though the two faiths are interchangeable. The ruler they meet, Tir Ram, was educated at Eton and Cambridge, which is both a nice point about how the elite of the country were implicated with the colonial oppressor, and an attempt at undermining any stereotypes about colonial subjects. It's problematic though, because he's supposed to be the Nizam of a Muslim province (Jabalhabad), so why then does he have a Hindu name? I've read somewhere that it may be a reference to the villain of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom - more intertextuality - which is not exactly unproblematic either.

- Really the depiction of Hinduism in this novel is pretty appalling. Apparently some fans were put out by the way in which a number of the Doctor's old foes are equated with particular old ones from H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. It is a fairly pointless retcon, adding little to the narrative. Personally though, I can't get very worked up about it when a religion that has over a billion adherents, which includes my in-laws, is also being insulted. The chanting of Cthulhu cultists is explicitly compared to Indian "tribesmen" by Watson at one point. Thuggees were actually worshipping Lovecraft's old ones. They mistook the alien planet of Ry'leh for the realm of Shiva because, you know, Indians are just ignorant savages who wouldn't know any better.

- On reflection, perhaps 'pretty appalling' is rather shrill? Any insult is clearly the result of carelessness rather than any active malice. Nothing here is especially offensive unless one is particularly earnest about these things. It only appears more offensive than it might actually be because the author is intent on both foregrounding his research and attempting to make a point about nineteenth century British imperialism. Which is perhaps only to restate what Philip Sandifer has already said on his blog. He is, after all, the Doctor Who expert.

- So yes, this is a novel that is an awful lot of fun in places if you like the kind of material/tropes with which it is playing. And I admit that I do. You can have a great time with at least the first half, as the insanity of Lovecraft and the mischief of the Doctor intrudes into the utterly rational world of Sherlock Holmes. There's a proper appreciation of how both of those worlds just don't fit into the rational scheme of Sherlock Holmes (consequently Holmes goes to pieces once the characters follow the villains to Ry'leh). But it's also a novel that, in attempting to confront something important, has swallowed some really unpleasant material. Whilst elsewhere it's good intentions are just clumsily handled. Perhaps Andy Lane just wasn't up to all of the challenges he set himself with his novel. Or it may just be that some of these problems are inherent in the material itself.

- It could just be that this kind of popular fiction isn't the best place to explore the legacy of British imperialism in India. Only, of course, we have the example of Vithal Rajan.

Sherlock Holmes vs. the Evil Empire!

Holmes of the Raj, by Vithal Rajan

Now, this is a fantastic idea. In fact it's such a good one, that Vithal Rajan wasn't even the first to have it. Take the popular character of late nineteenth-century fiction with whom we're all familiar and confront him with the realities of the British Empire. The Empire which hovers somewhere in the background of the Sherlock Holmes adventures. Of course you can say that many of Arthur Conan Doyle's stories feature no reference to the Empire, but enough of them do, and in any case, they were adventure stories written at the height of Empire in this country. The attitudes of imperialism, in the self confidence the characters exude, is a part of the narrative of Sherlock Holmes.

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And a quick look at Wikipedia reminds me that, in an episode which Julian Barnes fictionalised a few years back, Conan Doyle, if not his character, had a very real encounter with a half-Indian lawyer George Edalji, whom he defended against the prejudices of the British police and helped to exonerate.

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Confronting his famous character with the Empire seems like a telling of a story that Conan Doyle didn't, probably couldn't, get around to telling himself. Like I said, it's so good that someone already got their first. Andy Lane's Doctor Who novel, All-Consuming Fire, which not only mashes up the those two great British characters, but also Lovecraft's Cthulu mythos as well just for good measure, appeared in 1994 as part of Virgin's line of New Adventures published after the original series of the show ended. Now, I've not read All-Consuming Fire, but I did read a review just a few weeks ago on Philip Sandifer's magnificent TARDIS Editorum blog. Philip Sandifer, one of those bloggers who puts my meagre efforts to shame, has an often political take on the show and it's many spin offs. In this instance it sounds as though a political take would be pretty hard to avoid. From his account, it appears that the book is thoroughly aware of the problematic nature of some of the material it's mashing up. All too aware of the many abuses carried out by the British in our Empire, Andy Lane goes out of his way in his book to point out that he, through the mouthpiece of the Doctor, really doesn't approve of the British Empire. Which is problematic for several reasons, mainly because the book is apparently incredibly bad at representing the culture of the people the Empire is oppressing in India, mixing up the principles of Hinduism and Islam for instance, and often rather trite.

Again, like I say, I've not read Lane's book, although for all it's faults, it does sound like it might be worth tracking down. But I have had Vithal Rajan's book sitting on my shelves for a few months and this long preamble serves to give the reason why I chose to pull it off the shelves and read it next, because I thought that an Indian author's take on the same idea might well be more interesting. Written in a good approximation of Conan Doyle's style, the six stories, with five set in 1888 and the last under the shadow of a future war in 1913, send Watson and Holmes helter-skelter across the subcontinent, along the way encountering just about everyone who will have a future role in the independence movement. Or if not them, then their parents. As well, there are plenty of historical British characters, famous and otherwise, and not only Kipling, but analogues (the supposed originals on whom the author based his stories) of two of his most famous characters. If you don't know who everyone is, then there are helpful end notes, a device which reminds me of George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman series of novels.

Like Flashman, part of the joke comes from the reader knowing more than the characters who, leaving aside the implausibility that anyone travelling through India in 1888 would encounter such a disperate group of famous people from history like that, obviously have little idea of just how important some of these people are going to turn out to be. So for example, when the Prince of Wales is saved from a tiger by an Indian, the end note helpfully informs us that this man is the father of the man who will eventually write the Indian constitution. It's an at times affectionate ribbing of History. Not always so affectionate of course, when in the last story when Holmes and Watson foil a plot within the British military to discredit and murder a good number of the independence movement. But essentially, this is a very lighthearted set of stories. Holmes' detection often goes on in the background while Watson idles, giving us a frequently delightful travelogue, conveniently giving us a very full picture of all walks of life in British India. Again, it's not all that different from what MacDonald Fraser does in Flashman, his character's retrospective perspective allowing him to give us an incredibly detailed and well researched picture of the people and places amongst whom he travels.

Whilst there are jokes at the expense of the British - one of my favourites comes early on when they're told their driver will understand them if they just speak slowly and loudly - it's difficult to say that it's anti-British. Certainly not in the way that it sounds as though Lane's book is, the author indulging in a kind of overcompensation, apologising to the point of obsequiousness about something which our ancestors did. Funnily enough, that's not disimilar to something which actually happened to my wife not long after she arrived in Britain. Her British, white, liberal housemate felt the need to apologise to her for everything the British empire did in India. At some length.

And whilst in his review, Philip Sandifier criticises All-Consuming Fire for awkwardly grafting on it's social conscience about the horrors of British imperialism, he clearly wholly agrees with the sentiment:

But there’s a problem underlying all of this, and the book is aware of it. It’s 1994 now, and we’re all pretty much awake to the fact that the Victorian era consisted primarily of horrifying colonial impulses. It’s difficult to justify an unambiguous embrace of the Victorian in the mid-90s. And when you add Lovecraft, infamously racist dick that he was, you end up deeper in the weeds. And so the book, quite rightly, displays a social conscience. But there’s something… difficult about it. For instance, the scene where the Doctor yells at the villain, proclaiming, “you will be spreading death and destruction across the cosmos! The British Empire is based upon oppression and slavery. You offer not the hand of friendship but the jackboot of tyranny! I shall prevent your plans!” This is not wrong as such, but there’s something painfully awkward about it. And it’s far from the only moment like that - Benny refusing to help a beggar in India because, as she muses, “there were tens of thousands of people in Bombay. I couldn’t help all of them. That was the true evil. Not Daleks, not Hoothi. Poverty and powerlessness.” Again, true, but with a sort of painful facileness. I could cite more, but the point is, I think, made. 

And there's a problem here with this review too. It's all in that 'primarily'. As someone in the comments section pointed out, it all depends on how you look at it. For that commentator, the Victorian era was a time of great social progress. But if we narrow our focus just to the British in India, was the experience of the Indian people 'primarily' oppression and slavery? Before anyone reading this now tries to accuse of me of claiming that the British empire was a 'good' empire, the way I know some people do (just look at some of the scorn which has been heaped on those Kenyan men who have recently been granted permission to bring their case for compensation over the torture they suffered at the hands of British soldiers during the Mau-Mau uprising), that's not what I'm about to claim. I just think it's...more complicated than that. More nuanced. I'm as white and liberal as I suspect are Andy Lane and Phillip Sandifer and my wife's somewhat foolish former housemate, but I can't really accept such a simplified view anymore. Yes, it's my wife's fault, the influence of a trained historian. Undoubtedly, the British in India, throughout the empire, did some truly reprehensible things. In one story in Holmes of the Raj our heroes encounter a famine which has been if not manufactured, then certainly exacerbated by the British government's insistence on the doctrine of free trade. It's only through the actions of a British governor who goes against the order of his government and persuades a native merchant to help him who is able to get some famine relief to the local people. Really, aside from imperialism, the real evil in these stories appears to be free trade and those who unthinkingly espouse such an ideology. Plus ca change.

It's complicated though. The British government is the clear villain of this particular tale: British policies clearly lead to the deaths of many people. Yet the 'hero', if I can call him that, the character who at any rate does the most to help the people under his rule, is a British man. And then there's Holmes, who explicitly identifies himself as an agent of the British government, whose orders are the only reason he and Watson are actually in the country at all, but who otherwise does everything he can to help the native people whom he comes into contact with, and with whom he clearly has real sympathy. In both cases, you can argue that these are an idealisation by an Indian author, Holmes was never quite so sympathetic in Conan Doyle's original stories. Then again, you might ask why he goes to the trouble to include so many sympathetic British characters in his fiction. Why he might trouble not to depict British India as a hell of 'oppression and slavery'.

I've compared this book to Flashman a few times already, and I think one last comparison will draw out the point I'm trying to make here. MacDonald Fraser was, by his own admission, an imperialist. In his view the British Empire was predominantly a force for good which did much to spread ideals of democracy, science, education, etc. around the globe. It's not such an uncommon view, although not perhaps a very common one in my social circle. Yet as a writer and historian (his end notes show just how meticulous his research was for all his Flashman books), he had a basic honesty and clear sighted view of humanity that consequently his novels give a pretty damning view of 19th century British imperialism, almost in spite of themselves. In effect, Vithal Rajan comes at it from the other side. It's pretty clear where his sympathies lie, but at the same time he allows that India wasn't perfect before the British arrived. The Hindu caste system is shown to be hidebound and in need of reform. And some British individuals did good for the communities in which they found themselves. We see this in one story when Watson almost diagnoses the source of malaria, which nicely stands as an image for the material improvements of the country for which the British were responsible.

It's not that I think any good that the British did in India somehow excuses all the wrong we did. I don't believe that that kind of moral equivalence can ever exist. Which is why I dislike the use of the word 'balanced' in this context, one we see so often used by apologists for imperialism. Another term that irritates is 'realism', because that suggests we can somehow find a moral point which lets imperial aggressors off the moral hook. The victims of imperialism still exist, and the perpetrators of such crimes should be held to account, even if that can only be achieved via the history books. On the other hand, we also shouldn't ignore the existence of positive things which may have occurred, if only accidentally, because of the encounter between coloniser and colonised. The British presence in India was a history which occurred over centuries, and the British Empire was different things in different times and places. If people are complicated, then so I think are the empires they create. And if the Victorian era was a time of progressive movements as well as cruel oppression, then I strongly suspect that many such movements and beliefs were inspired or provoked by the experience of being in or ruling an empire. In which case, without the empire, would they have ever existed? The term I would prefer in this context is the one I applied to MacDonald Fraser above: 'clear-eyed', because it suggests an awareness of all the ways in which reality, however uncomfortably, doesn't fit into our neat ideological boxes.

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A cursory look at Wikepedia also shows me that Conan Doyle also wrote a pamphlet in support of the Boer war. And a few years later wrote another denouncing abuse in the Belgian Congo. Clearly an early example of 'their empire was worse than ours'. So he wasn't perfect. For all the ways in which Doyle was progressive, he was clearly also capable of possessing unthinking imperialist assumptions. Which is one reason why it's so pleasing when a writer like Vithal Rajan comes along and corrects him in such a playful fashion.