That stuff always involved attitudes and ideas which are quite anachronistic. Consider: did Nasser, the “Big Dictator” as I have heard Egyptians call him, operate a free press? Or Sadat? Or even Mubarak, mildest of the three? The Egyptian press was far freer before all of these despots came along, even though certainly regulated and censored.

I enjoyed particularly the idea that British colonial rule involved censorship of *British personnel*. The empire, which I actually remember the last bits of, did not work like that: Britons, remember, were never, never slaves. You could do some pretty wild stuff out there, and the worst that would happen to you was to be sent home. I remember one incident where a British firm in Bombay was found to be selling modern arms to the tribesmen on the Kyber Pass, who were using them to kill British forces. The company was invited merely to leave India.

Now I’m sure you write in good faith; but we have been subjected to 50 years of supercharged nonsense. The people who lived and worked in the empire knew different. In our libraries, unread, are the memoirs of retired imperial civil servants from all over the empire, written before the dawn of modern anti-colonialism. These will make very clear how the empire was really run, as written by those who did it.

I would advise anyone interested in British Egypt to read some contemporary accounts of how British rule really worked. In particular, a read of Milner’s “England in Egypt” will give anyone who does so an excellent idea of how *everything* actually worked, and what the direction and purpose of policy was.

But I fear that we drift off topic with this issue, so pardon me if I moderate further comments in this direction. There is a serious current issue that we need to worry about here.

Stuart, yes, the only democratic and liberal period in Egypt was experienced by Egyptians under British rule between 1922 and 1952.

“Free speech under our rule” is exactly the kind of statement that fuels the hardline fires.