He's infamous for his combative – some would say rebarbative – interviewing style. Does he think this is always productive? “Do I think all interviews should be conducted like that? Of course not! What a stupid question!” Even in reply, Paxman is combative. In a deft move of opprobrium masked by joviality he turns the question back on us: do we mean all interviews? Do we mean with politicians? He is ever eager to seek clarification, though seems to not reflect that clarification on himself. Over interview style he is cagey. He claims that the best kind of interview is one where ‘you learn something’. One wonders if we’ve succeeded on this.

Are there moments when he sits up in bed and wishes he hadn’t asked that question, or gone down that path? “Yes, often there are”, he says, unwilling to specify these times. There are notable moments – all with high viewing figures on YouTube – where politicians have met Paxman in a David and Goliath showdown. The petty twigs and stones of Michael Howard are no match for Paxman’s uncompromising tenacity. “Did you threaten to overrule him”. Twelve times he launches the question. Twelve times he meets various fluffy forms of avoidance. Did he learn anything? Is this an attack from the Left, the Right? Watching Paxman talk one is aware of his great theatricality. There is a sense that sometimes the factual is compromised at the expense of drama.

Paxman is highly critical of the contemporary trend of politicians well-trained in rhetoric. “We’re now up against politicians who’ve gone on courses to learn how to say what they want regardless of the question asked and that’s very unproductive. We need to find a way through”.

And the best way to break through the rhetorical guard is to be robust. ‘Very often it’s more productive to attack from the Left when they’re expecting an attack from the Right’. It’s a nice sound-bite, probably rehearsed on the numerous occasions he’s been asked about it.

We expect Jeremy Paxman to be grumpy about everything  – evasive politicians, slow-witted quiz contestants, even Marks and Spencer’s underwear. It makes logical sense, therefore, that his latest literary enterprise – a brief history of the British Empire – should display all the hallmarks of Paxman’s cantankerous style. Yet, the opprobrium is not reserved for the devotees of Britain’s imperial past, but rather for those who choose to ignore it.

Empire: What Ruling the World did to the British is, in essence, a potted history of our imperial past. The study is not problematised by imperial terminology or recent historiography; it is, after all, a popular history written by a journalist – and one that will probably sell well.

Paxman’s major gripe is that the Empire has been elided in public debate, a problem which stems, as he sees it, from the didactic, stilted manner in which history is taught in British schools. In his speech to the Union, he further bemoaned the ever-growing distance between academic and public discourse. Though he would not go so far as to condemn the sound-bite culture of television journalism, which, according to one audience challenger, was responsible for that distance.

Any historian of Empire is inevitably asked the question: ‘for or against?’ Yet Paxman’s book seem reluctant to pass judgement. We asked him whether he had consciously set out to pen an even-handed account of Empire – and, after we had exchanged a few more rebarbative remarks about the merits of our question, he finally replied. “This thing that was so central to the lives of so many people for so long cannot simply be ignored”, adding “it seems to me that a judgement has been past about the Empire and it’s deemed that no further discussion is required. I think that this simply won’t do”.

But Paxman passes no obvious judgements himself. Indeed, when the main polemical thrust of the study is, as he summed up for us, that “there are some things about [Empire] that are disgraceful…and other things that are rather admirable”, there is scant room for disagreement (or even originality).

Paxman, the combative journalist seems to fall for the same traps he accuses politicians of. Over interview style he is cagey. He claims the best kind of interview is one where "you learn something". One wonders if we've succeeded on this.