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The Charge of the Light Brigade, Gordon’s Last Stand, Scott of the Antarctic: many of the best-known episodes in British history are tales of fortitude and calm in the face of disaster. This study of the ‘heroic failure’ tradition offers a reassessment of Victorian and Edwardian attitudes to soldiers and explorers, arguing that Britons’ enthusiastic celebration of such failures resulted from their desire to see the Empire as just, benevolent and moral.