Sepia-tinged melancholy lingers over many parts of Britain’s former empire. From Happy Valley in Kenya to Harare in Zimbabwe, once-grand clubhouses, haciendas and cricket grounds gently subside, as the memories of grandeur dissipate through the generations.
Forty years on from the Falklands War, though, nowhere beats Argentina for a still-tangible sense of lost opportunity, luxurious times past and poignant reminders of the way things were when Britannia ruled the waves.
My ancestors didn’t fight in India, discover mountains in Africa or commit reckless acts of derring-do for the Raj. But my great-great-grandfather, an engineer at Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast, sailed to Buenos Aires in the 1870s to build railways. Billy Taylor was one of thousands of buccaneering middle-and upper-class Brits who emigrated in the mid-19th century to make their fortune in the Argentine, a vast and largely unexplored
