When was Britain’s finest hour?

When was Britain’s finest hour? For most readers the answer is easy: the summer of 1940, when Britain stood alone in defiance of the Third Reich, urged on by the soaring rhetoric of Winston Churchill.

But I would argue that Britain’s finest hour came in 1815, with the victory at Waterloo, sealing the final triumph in a 22-year-long war with Revolutionary and then Napoleonic France. In 1815, Britain reached a pinnacle of military might that it never afterwards matched.

After Waterloo, Britain faced a bright future, and there was an awareness of that. In 1940, on the other hand, Churchill knew that victory would depend on America, and that the price for that would be high, marking another drop downwards in a continuous spiral of imperial decline. Britain in 1945 was essentially bankrupt, whereas in 1815 it had subsidised its allies, and was the world’s financial hegemon.