Whether or not the principles of Knighthood have changed over the years is of some relevance, I view Spielberg's Knighthood with some disdain. Sure, a few of his films have captured the world, and he may use brits in his production staff--I'm still waiting.

In response to the comment of deserving "ordinary people"...well how about you Daniel2. You do your country proud with your wealth of knowledge pertaining to the history of the institution, and you help to enlighten the rest of us. In my mind this alone better qualifies you than Spielberg, who probably knew nothing of it before his publicist mentioned the possibility.

If anything, I am disheartened by this recent event because it might disenfranchise many of your fellows...it might be an American world--but please don't turn Britain into America. There's too much history at stake to allow that.

What a smashing message.

The thing is, Quill, ‘ordinary’ folk like me are being recognized in the British honours lists – milkmen, road sweepers, careworkers, nurses, firemen, policemen – all of those people who are doing their bit for the community.

The British honours are rewarded to people from all walks of life, of all races, of all cultures, of all religions, and of all nations. In addition to British citizens, large numbers of people from the British Commonwealth nations and beyond continue to be honoured.

The honorary knighthoods bestowed on such Americans as Ronald Reagan and George Bush were made as much out of appreciation for their services to world peace as to the importance of their friendship with Great Britain. Much the same can be said of Steven Spielberg. He is a man who has firstly served global cinema, but has also proved his friendship with Britain time and time again. But, despite the historical ties between Britain and the US, it’s not just Americans who are honoured. This year’s honours list is conspicuous for the number of Italians who have been honoured by Britain – a nation that falls outside of the British Commonwealth and a nation that does not share the common heritage of Britain and the US.

The principles of knighthood have changed over the years – the nature of the recipients is proof of that. But, the nature of Great Britain and the British people has also changed, and the atmosphere of camaraderie, goodwill, open-mindedness and co-operation that has swept Great Britain over the past decade bodes well for the future.

Great Britain is evolving, and is changing for the better in my opinion. Love it or loathe it, it is American culture, or ‘the American way’ that is influencing Britain more than anything. Not only that, American neo-colonialism is a global phenomenon.

So, Quill, what one has to remember is that up until only 200 years ago, British and American history was one and the same. I see it as a natural progression that American ‘freedom of expression’ continues to enrich British society…..it’s a meeting of minds, and nobody can take away British history, least of all the Americans, for it was the British people who established in America, the concepts and philosophies that they were unable to propagate in England itself. Modern global history has been influenced as much by the British people, as it has by the British establishment. Both the British establishment and the British people have played vital parts in global progression – but in quite differing ways. And today, it is America that embodies the best of both worlds.

Ordinary man maybe an ambigious word to use but dammit, most people know what I mean.
I don't want to be awarded ever, man I do deserve some though.

Also, the British history is distorted. Another sad thing is that the British think everyone owes them one.

Though you may not be patriotic, you are certainly boringly conventional. Anyway, these days these British honours have less to do with patriotism and more to do with society’s recognition of and respect for the outstanding contributions of individuals.

How is British history distorted?

Granted, such lame, impotent, laughable and politically-correct movies as LAST OF THE MOHICANS, THE PATRIOT and U-571 may distort historical fact by ‘playing down’ British achievement or enhancing the less savoury actions of British imperial endeavour.

But actual recorded British historical fact is generally even-handedly presented.

Nobody (least of all me) is attempting to wallow in the ‘glory’ of the now dismantled British Empire – far from it. Your reaction here Darth Fart is quite natural, and I’ve come across it many times before in those people who have little knowledge of their own past. I start talking about history, and such people will say to me, “nobody’s interested in the British Empire anymore”, or, “the British Empire is best forgotten, all that patriotic jingoism, and anyway, people don’t want to know about slavery and concentration camps and all that”.

My attitude is, let us use history in a positive way. By referring to history, man can learn and help to prevent historical mistakes from being repeated in the future. Though the British Empire achieved many positive goals, I believe people should also learn about the terrible deeds that the British perpetrated all over the globe.

That’s why the British violation and decimation of the North American Indian should be taught in our schools. And the same goes for the slave trade. Indeed, there was a recent event in Bristol (the world capital of slave-trading back in the 18th century) in which people came from all over the world to learn about the slave trade. The event was organised by West Indians and attended by children of mainly African origin.

So, whilst I love to talk about the Royal Navy defeating Napoleon at Trafalgar in 1805, I also do not try to hide the fact that the British invented the concentration camp during the Boer War in South Africa (1899-1902), or that it was the British who built and trained the Japanese Navy during the early 1900s, or that it was the British who flooded China with opium during the early 19th century, thus reversing that nation’s progress by 100 years. The list of historical British atrocities is endless.

Nothing is cut and dried in history Darth Fart, every villain had his good points, and every hero had a dark side.

I'm not a conventional bore, you don't know me, I have a complex mind. I just don't think awards are consistently awarded, and don't get me started on Academy awards.

As far as I know, Paul Dehn was never honoured with an Order of the British Empire….he certainly was never knighted. Of course, he may well have declined an honour at some point for political reasons, but I have no recollection of this.

Even in the relatively short time since Dehn’s death, the political, social and constitutional makeup of Great Britain has fundamentally changed. Spike Milligan’s honorary knighthood in this year’s honours list is the perfect illustration of the more easy-going, progressive and liberal spirit that now pervades all of British society.

Milligan was born in India, but wanted to live in Britain. However, he would not swear the Oath of Allegiance to the British Crown and therefore took up Irish citizenship. At one point he even referred to his close friend the Prince of Wales as a ‘grovelling little bastard’……and now he’s been knighted, something that would have been unthinkable amongst the British establishment twenty years ago….not so long before that, he would lost his head!

Firstly, apologies for jumping to the wrong conclusions about you when I talked of your indifference to history.

As I have said before, I believe all of history should be remembered, discussed and learned from….it is important that people are made aware of the British Empire’s crimes against humanity in North America, Africa, India, Pakistan, Australia and so on. At the same time however, people should not lose sight of the myriad positive aspects of the British Empire, and its often constructive and unifying influence on global progression. No single nation has so profoundly and positively influenced global progression during the years 1550 through 1950 – yes, the British Empire was wrong, but at the time it was the ‘way of the world’, and let’s face it, considering French imperial incompetence, the wholesale destructiveness of the Spanish in South America, and the decadence of the Dutch, the British Empire could be described as ‘the best of a bad lot’, and by a street.

Please allow me to quote my Movie-Music Message-board review of a Marlon Brando movie I recently viewed – this should help to clarify my attitude towards the British Empire.

Viewed – July 30 2000

BURN! aka QUEIMADA! (1968 France/Italy) movie **** score ****

Marlon Brando gives a superb and convincing performance as English adventurer Sir William Walker – the personification of perfidious Albion – intelligent, ruthless, cunning, driven, duplicitous, and very charming.

This tale of 19th century colonial exploitation is all the more harrowing and powerful because of its authentic depiction of the sheer ruthlessness and the irrepressible strength of British Imperial ambition. Such lame, soft, historically-whitewashed, diluted and politically-correct movies as LAST OF THE MOHICANS (1992) and BRAVEHEART failed to impart a true sense of time and place and the real hardships and challenging situations that existed, because they relied too heavily on weak and diluted politically-correct 90s sensibilities. It is a common mistake of filmmakers to make historical movies with character motivation driven by modern ideals, and depicted with modern-day attitude. Life was unimaginably tough and harsh in colonial days, but with LAST OF THE MOHICANS (for instance), any impact that the movie may have had was lost because the filmmakers largely ignored the bigger political and historical picture, and also they attempted to play down the effectiveness of the British army and the colonial militia by having the Indians inflicting a far too high a proportion of casualties on the army – LAST OF THE MOHICANS (1992) is an affront to the North American Indian. In the real world and in the harsh and cold light of day, the exact reverse was true. The British authorities and the British American militia decimated the native Indian in North America whilst in return suffering a relatively tiny proportion of casualties…..the makers of LAST OF THE MOHICANS basically white-washed history, instead of owning-up to the true damage that the British Empire did to the North American Indian (and the Western movie genre continued the misrepresentation of the historical facts by exaggerating the success that the North American Indian had in conflict with the pioneers in the 19th century as a justification for the Americans’ retaliatory actions and gaining of territory). Thus, LAST OF THE MOHICANS had a childish simplicity and a ‘world of make-believe’ feel…..all that was missing was Mickey Mouse and Margaret Hamilton pedalling her broom-stick.

THE PATRIOT provides a good example of why this wishy-washy, white-washing of history, half-baked and politically correct approach to filmmaking fails. You see, virtually everyone accepts that the British American colonists were justified in their rebellion against the English Crown; but when a movie goes completely overboard in unfairly demonizing one side of the conflict (in this case the British authorities) by fabricating atrocities on the British side and by deifying the Americans, it actually makes many people begin to question the Americans’ justification for rebellion, and a study of all of the facts surrounding the American War of Independence will reveal that the war wasn’t good versus bad, it was far more complex than that. I’m not just talking about things like the fact that Tarleton never wore a red-coat because he actually commanded a legion of Loyalist cavalry and skilled wilderness guerrillas that wore green…..no, I’m talking about how THE PATRIOT implies that after the American Revolution, previously ‘put-upon’ slaves lived happily ever after…..this is an insult to all of those African-Americans who continued to suffer under slavery for eighty years after the British recognized US independence, and continue to this day to fight for true equality. The British Empire outlawed slavery sixty years before the United States, an act that directly inspired Latin American countries - despite Britain’s absorbing British Guyana into the Empire and the occupation of Buenos Aires in 1810 - to gain independence from their ailing mother-countries Spain and Portugal. In fact, during the first half of the 19th century the British Royal Navy enforced a blockade of its West African territory to prevent American slave ships from rounding up more African people destined for the American south.

Anyway, getting back to BURN!, Brando is despatched by the British to a Portuguese colony in the West Indies to undermine Portuguese authority by inciting rebellion amongst the huge slave population, thus allowing the British to gain control of the island colony and the valuable sugar-crop that went with it.

This movie perfectly illustrates that even though the British Empire enveloped one quarter of the globe, its influence and power extended well beyond its official boundaries and well into China, South America and many other parts of the world. Following the decline of the Spanish, Dutch and Portuguese empires in the 17th century and the French empire in the 18th century, Britain not only was able to extend its Empire to gain control over most of the West Indies for instance, the British were also able to take control of many European colonies that ceased to be protected by their waning mother-countries. The British were often able to do this with the minimum of military effort, but the maximum of diplomatic persuasion – that often amounted to holding a figurative knife to the throat of the colony.

BURN! tells the story of one such ‘enterprise’…..and the enormous suffering and loss of life that it caused. The movie’s narrative is so clearly defined, and the characters are so definite and believable in their motivations, that maximum impact is made by the filmmakers. Brando arrives at the West Indian Portuguese colony and immediately goes about sabotaging the island’s 300 year-old peace. He robs banks, incites rebellion, informs the Portuguese authorities of rebel movements, and plays one side against the other……all on the instructions of Her Britannic Majesty’s Government. Soon the island is turned upside down, the Portuguese colonists are pitted against the formerly docile slave population. In the end, Brando manages to force the colony to become independent of Portugal, thus opening up the colony and its rich sugar-crop for the British…..job done.

But, ten years later, the independent nation, now governed by a mixture of Portuguese rebels and former African slaves, is actually run by the British Sugar companies…..the Royal Navy sees to that. However, the policies of the ‘British’, despite building a hospital and fifty miles of roads, are not to the satisfaction of the people of the former Portuguese colony, and a new rebellion begins against the puppet government. Brando returns to attempt to appease the rebels through his usual methods of charming duplicity…..but this time fails, and calls in the British army. The effect on the island and its people is devastating…..the British, under Brando’s command, employ scorched-earth tactics against the rebels…..the results of which are horrifying.
Morricone’s scoring is superb - his usual heady mixture of choral work and pop-styled orchestral passages. Many of the jungle scenes are scored with such percussive smoothness, orchestral dexterity, and thematic strength, that it made me realize just how poorly conceived and conservative Goldsmith’s score to MEDICINE MAN was.

By the way, contrary to Maltin’s review of the movie, the 1987 film WALKER, with Ed Harris, is about a completely different William Walker. The William Walker in the Ed Harris movie was an American adventurer who got involved with Central American politics.

BURN! succeeds on many levels, not least in its depiction of the British (especially Brando’s character) as real people…..and not the one-dimensional, foppish, supercilious, crypto-homosexual stereotypes that movies like LAST OF THE MOHICANS, BRAVEHEART and THE PATRIOT insist on pummelling us with.

This actually makes the actions of many British Imperialists far more horrifying…..because we see them as ordinary people, like you and me…..people with wives and children, people with good grace and manner, people with the same weaknesses, conscience, and scruples as anyone else…..that’s what hammers home the true toughness and rigours of life in colonial days…..basically, it was shoot, or be shot.

Many modern politically-correct filmmakers fail to illustrate that although it was tough for the British colonists, pioneers and armies serving abroad, it was even tougher for the indigenous peoples whose culture and territory Britain violated – a fact that movies like BURN! and the superior 1936 version of LAST OF THE MOHICANS ram home without compromise.

Darth Fart - That concludes the review of BURN!

Yes, BURN! is a good example of a movie that tells its historical story with authenticity and without the white-washing effect of political-correctness – this is where films like LAST OF THE MOHICANS (1992), BRAVEHEART and THE PATRIOT, though they may be enjoyable movies, are useless as history because they are told from the perspective of contemporary society, in all its comfortable security and political correctness. You see, LAST OF THE MOHICANS and BRAVEHEART did not portray the historical events depicted from the perspective of the era – just as you Darth Fart may judge the British Empire simply from today’s perspective. It is a false view – the urban environment, public attitudes, peoples’ values, society’s rules – they were all different in colonial days – it was a different, tougher world. From our modern, affluent and comfortable perspective, the British Empire behaved atrociously – but at the time – it was the way of the world.