Why Clive should not fall

The movement to pull down statues of Robert Clive has attracted some influential voices. In his Spectator Diary, Tristram Hunt says he’s been approached by my old friend the historian William Dalrymple to see whether the V&A museum would take the Whitehall statue of Clive. Fresh from his Brexit battles, Lord Adonis has joined the fray.

But Hunt doesn’t want anything to do with the ‘corrupt and colonising’ Clive. Many of Clive’s contemporaries would have felt the same way. The trouble is their views were formed by ‘fake news’ which, like its 21st century counterpart, was contrived for partisan political purposes and was uncritically accepted by persons who should have known better.

Shropshire’s most famous son was born in 1725. As a teenager, he was sent to Madras to work as a clerk (writer) for the East India Company. At the time, this was the fastest route to fortune – equivalent to entering the City of London in our day.