“The hard reality is, surely, that for the likes of you and I, there is little choice other than to leave our fate, ultimately, in the hands of those great gentlemen at the hub of this world who employ our services.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day

Yesterday the BBC broadcast The Remains of the Day (1993) adapted from the brilliant Booker Prize-winning 1989 novel of the same name, by Kazuo Ishiguro. It has become one of my favourite films now but that has not always been the case.

My first experience with this movie was when I was no more than about 25 years old and a huge fan of science fiction and those iconic movies of the late 1970s and 1980s such as Blade Runner, Alien — and its nearly as good sequel Aliens — Star Wars and Predator. I was unable to see the attraction and critical acclaim of this very limited and claustrophobic world of servants and masters in pre-World War Two England.

It was too much of a culture shock to go from an outer space and mind-blowing near-future time into a claustrophobic — almost incestuous — class-based, inner space, of privilege and time almost standing still by holding fast to its political atavism. I was no…

But as we get older we change and we learn and we experience more. And on my second ever viewing I began to see the absolute genius of the film and the content which was not only relevant historically but became even more relevant as a scorching hot and searing indictment of those in power in the 1930s since the 1950s and those who have held power in England for the last 14 years. And of course not just in England. Wherever there is the abuse of power by the already entitled class this film will hit home, hard.

If I were teaching modern history and/or politics I would make reading the book and watching the film (either/or) a set part of my curriculum. This would be the very foundation of my course on the perversion of patriotism that creates the fertile breeding ground for…