My empire 'twas of thee

JOHN MUGGERIDGE

A History of Britain: The Fate of Empire 1776-2000 By Simon SchamaMcClelland & Stewart,575 pages, $65 The British public is on an imperial nostalgia trip. Why else would Hollywood have chosen last year to issue its fifth remake of E. A. W. Mason's classic 1902 blood-in-the-desert adventure-romance, The Four Feathers? And there are other, even more telling signs that the Empire -- not any old empire, but the the Empire -- has again become an object of interest and pride for Britons. After more than 10 years, and £40- million worth of remodelling, an abandoned railway terminus has attracted rave reviews, not to mention lengthening lines of visitors, at its recent reopening in the west coast port of Bristol (a city appropriately enough once dependent for its prosperity on the slave trade), as the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum.