First things first, as this is an article about toilets, we need to establish if the word ‘toilet’ is an acceptable word. Here at The Spectator, editorial opinion on this crucial point is deeply divided. Some have expressed a preference for ‘bog’. Others opt for ‘john’, ‘jakes’, or lavatory. 

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We also got votes for ‘dunny’, restroom, WC, outhouse, ‘chugger’, KYBO, tearoom, ‘jerry’, ‘Jordan’, ‘thunderbox’, ‘quincy’, ‘can’, ‘hopper’, ‘neddy’, ‘head’, ‘toot’, ‘forakers’, ‘shiloly’, cottage, ‘shunkle’, throne, think tank, ‘brasco’, ‘khazi’, and ‘Reading Room’, but in the end it came down to a brutal bog-off between ‘loo’ and ‘toilet’, and we decided that ‘loo’, once an acceptably classless euphemism, has now become a bit twee, Surrey and Non-U, whereas ‘toilet’ has been oddly re-gentrified, into acceptability, like Hackney, so toilet it is. 

And with that out of the way, we can move on to the point of this article which is, I am afraid, the unfortunate truth that large parts of the developed but non-western world now regard our western toilets as gross, primitive, and backward. This is as surprising as it is sobering. Because, of course, we judge civilisations by their toilets: and their relative absence, presence, functionality, and cleanliness. 

The advanced nature of Roman toilets, for instance, is one reason why we admire the Romans. In 200AD they generally had running water, nifty slate seats,........

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