【单选题】

Military victories, trade, missionary zeal, racial arrogance and a genius for bureaucracy all played well-documented roles in making theBritishEmpire the largest the world has known. Rather less well understood was the importance of the moustache.

A、monumental new history, TheDecline and Fall of theBritishEmpire by PiersBrendon, promises to restore this neglected narrative to its rightful place in the national story.
Dr.Brendon, a Fellow ofChurchillCollege,Cambridge University, argues that colonial moustaches had a clear practical purpose: to demonstrate virility and intimidate theEmpire’s subject peoples. The waxing and waning of theBritish moustache precisely mirrored the fortunes of theEmpire-blooming beneath the noses of theEast IndiaCompany’s officers, finding full expression in Lord Kitchener’s bushy appendage and fading out with the Suez crisis inAnthonyEden’s apologetic wisps.
This analysis of the growth of the stiff upper lip is an essential strand ofDr.Brendon’s epic 650-page political, cultural, economic and social history of theEmpire, which is published on October 18. "It is a running gag in a serious book, but it does give one a point of reference," he said yesterday. In the 18th and early 19th century, sophisticatedBritons wore wigs but spurned facial hair. The exception was the King, George III, whose unshaven appearance was mocked as a sign of his madness. However, by the 1830s the "moustache movement" was in the ascendancy.British officers, copying the impressive moustaches that they encountered on French and Spanish soldiers during the Napoleonic Wars, started the craze, but the real impetus came form Indi
A、
Just asBritish troops inAfghanistan today are encouraged to grow beards to ease their dealings with local tribesmen, so the attitudes of Indian troops under the command ofEast IndiaCompany officers in the first half of the 19th century altered the appearance of theBritish soldier. "For the Indian sepoy the moustache was a symbol of virility. They laughed at the unshavenBritish officers,"Dr.Brendon saiD、In 1854 moustaches were made compulsory for the company’sBombay regiment. The fashion tookBritain by storm as civilians imitated their heroes.
Dr.Brendon writes. "During and after theCrimean War, barbers advertised different patterns in their windows such as the ’Raglan’ and theCardigan’." Moustaches were clipped, trimmed and waxed "until they curved like sabres and bristled like bayonets".After 1918 moustaches became thinner and humbler as theEmpire began to gasp for breath, even as it continued to expand territorially. It had been fatally wounded,Dr.Brendon suggests, by the very belief in the freedom that it had preacheD、After the victory over Germany and Japan in 1945, independence movements across the red-painted sections of the world map, andBritain’s own urgent domestic priorities, meant that theEmpire was doomeD、
The moustache too was in terminal decline. "It had become a joke thanks toCharlieChaplin and Groucho Marx. It had become an international symbol of ’villainy’ thanks to Hitler’s toothbrush," writesDr.Brendon. InBritain it was also synonymous with the "ColonelBlimps"o clinging to an outmoded idea of colonial greatness.
InEden’s faint moustacheBritain’s diminished international status found a fitting symbol. It all but disappeared on TV and, moments before his broadcast on the eve of the fateful occupation of the SuezCanal in 1956, his wife had to blacken the bristles with mascar
A、His successor, Harold Macmillan, was the lastBritish Prime Minister to furnish his upper lip. Harold Wilson, the self-styled man of the people, had been clean shaven since the 1940s,Dr.Brendon notes. "He obviously believed that the white hot technological revolution was not to be operated with a moustache.\
The word "virility" in the sentence "that colonial moustaches had a clear practical purpo