‘Like a cinema when the last of the audience has gone and only the staff remain’: Biggles and (post )imperial heroism

This chapter explores the heroization of a fictional British pilot and adventurer between the 1930s and the 1980s. Created in 1932 as a more realistic representation of British experience of the First World War, Biggles soon became a conduit for attitudes about imperialism and its impact. Novels and stories about ‘Biggles’ came to be read and revered around the globe. The fictional hero’s global reach testifies to the ability of imperialist heroic figures to linger in European and non-European cultural imaginations long after decolonization.

The chapter argues that although the ideology of empire disseminated by these narratives was at times ambivalent and subject to change, Biggles’s adventures tended to affirm the legitimacy of white supremacy and the British Empire’s continuing political, economic, and cultural influence in its former colonies. By the 1970s, however, British authorities grew hesitant to uphold Biggles as an admirable imperialist hero. Today, the global appeal of his heroism has waned, suggesting that the imperialist heroic qualities he embodied are no longer compatible with postcolonial hero systems.