Make sure your volume is on: "Sir George talks about the Fort"
Show transcript
Halt, or I fire! Don’t panic, just my little joke, but you really are under the guns of my little ornamental fort, just over there on the island.
It’s charming, isn’t it… just about big enough for a one-man garrison as long as he doesn’t want to lie down!
It’s another of the designs I brought back from China – they build their forts with outward sloping walls, you see, tremendously thick at the base, almost impossible to batter down. Every city in China is fortified, you know. In fact the word for ‘city’ is also the word for ‘wall’. If you aren’t fortified, you aren’t a city, no matter how big you are.
When I use this little fort for fireworks and mock sieges, I fly the imperial flag of the Manchu emperor over it, bright yellow with a long dragon… it looks most dramatic.
Looking back, I’m so sad that our relationship with the Chinese has become so one-sided, especially with that war we fought about opium. The East India Company should never have allowed merchants to pay for tea with smuggled opium – that’s not right, and we all knew it, I think. But merchants can get mesmerised by profits. I spoke out against the whole shoddy episode in my House of Commons speech – said the Chinese would never forget or forgive, and we were storing up trouble for the future.
Well, we shall see if I am right, I suppose.