PICK OF THE DAY

Portillo’s Empire Journey Channel 5, 9pm

In the penultimate episode of his rattling history of the British Empire, Michael Portillo (right) visits South Africa and uncovers a chequered colonial past.

It began with the subjugation of the Zulu people, whose brave and innovative armies could not prevail for one reason: the British had guns. For an elite few expats, conquest meant immense riches, harvested through the toil of black workers in gold mines, into one of which Portillo descends hundreds of feet.

But there is no more shameful imperial legacy than the vestiges of one of the concentration camps in which thousands of civilians – both Afrikaans and black – were left to die during the Boer War. The shocking conclusion Portillo hears is that the iniquitous apartheid system was a direct consequence of the moral blindness and racism of British rule. ★★★★★