Viewed from 2020, Victorian/Edwardian 'English' Gentlemen explorers
were an odd bunch of sorts..

Back when I was a militant lefty student at the height of Rock Against Racism,
I decided to write my dissertation on H Rider Haggard..

A casual reading of King Solomon's Mines,
just for the perverse fun of it [to have a laugh at the horrible Victorian Imperialists],
turned out to be the most enjoyable addictive read of my entire degree...

So I worked in a clever dick smartarse angle exploring colonial ideology,
just to convince my lecturer to let me do it..
Then spent the rest of the year immersed in Haggard's stories and biographies..

My conclusions were that he was actually quite progressive and less racist than expected,
as his early life as a colonial administrator
gave him a real respect for the idealised 'noble savage'..

I can't remember if he privately used derogatory language regarding Africans,
but it would be understandable if he did, living in his class in that era..

We have to make allowances that those Victorian gents could be a weird mess of both good and bad contradictions..

Ok, I'm amusing myself taking the piss out of Cecil's adventures amongst my ancestors in Scrumpyshire,
but I can never-the-less take his legacy seriously...

It's still funnier in my mind, visualizing Michal Palin or Hugh Grant
portraying him in a satirical farce.
But that don't mean I might not get to like Cecil
if I could be bothered studying him...???