The legacy of the Victorians is everywhere; we depend on them for our sewage disposal, our railway networks, much of our infrastructure and housing stock. Even the hooded eyelids of our Royal Family mark them out as descendants of Victoria herself. The right often dwells on how far we’ve fallen from Victorian greatness – painting modern Britain’s existence amongst the physical debris of Victoriana as akin to living in the ruins of a superior civilisation, like mud-smeared Visigoths prowling around the remains of the Colosseum. Less discussed is how the Victorians are still very much with us. 

‘In the UK, both people must say “yes” to sex’, scolds one of the posters, which were handed out to asylum seekers. ‘This is called consent’. There’s something unnerving about the combination of Janet and John language with the grim message it contains

‘In the UK, both people must say “yes” to sex’, scolds one of the posters, which were handed out to asylum seekers. ‘This is called consent’. There’s something unnerving about the combination of Janet and John language with the grim message it contains

We seem to have heartily taken on the characteristics for which the Victorians came to be most despised by succeeding generations; their mawkishness, hypocrisy and above all, their moralising. The Victorian belief that humanity can be finger-wagged into being ‘good’ and that the wholesale improvement in manners and morals was always just one corrective step........

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