This commercial trivialising has been developing for a long time. It was over thirty years ago that I dismayed in Laycock Abbey to see huge displays of Harry Bloody Potter (to give him his full name). On business trips, I went through the County of Shakespeare and the County of Robin Hood. The Scottish prefer to use the disgusting Braveheart film to attract tourists, ignoring their great record for doctors, writers, composers, scientists, inventors, and at least one great explorer. London has the Jack the Ripper Experience (or tour). A couple of days ago, I read that Ancoats, for many years one of Manchester's worst slums (and there were plenty of competitors) is now 'a happening neighbourhood'. Attempts to find accurate history of this or any other city district are always bogged down in the perpetual complaints about the poor people of the past. Peterloo is a popular one in Manchester, along with the poor Irish. Bristol has no history now but slave trading, and perhaps for good measure, tobacco.
But it isn't just this sort of puerile opportunism that is damaging history. As a child, I knew that Alfred the Great burnt some cakes. Very little, if anything, else. Every child knows of Henry the Eighth, but only because he had six wives and executed some of them. How many children know about Henry the Seventh? We have books and films about Robin Hood and King Arthur, who didn't exist; and nothing about Willikin of the Weald, who did. We need to go back, not just to teach history, but to learn it, by trying to unravel the truth from the lies. History has been written by churchmen, victorious royalty and their supporters, by unscrupulous politicians, and by moralisers. Thus, Oliver Cromwell has been the subject of disgraceful lies, by priests, Restoration monarchists, and, as I recall, by Arthur Mee in his Encyclopaedias. We need collectively to study history without the caricatures, the propaganda, and blatant ignorance. We need to avoid assessment, but if not, to base assessment on the proper criteria, not on wars won, passing popularity, or on our political prejudices. The greatest figures of the nineteenth century were not Gladstone, Disraeli and Palmerston: they were Lord Shaftesbury, Michael Sadler, Richard Oastler; and many others. We need to study poverty, and the horrors of mill, mine and factory working without class-driven propaganda. We need to study great women without its being propaganda of feminism. We need to stop treating history as matters of good and bad, of rich and poor, of oppressor and victim. We need to make ordinary matters interesting, which they were.
This commercial trivialising has been developing for a long time. It was over thirty years ago that I dismayed in Laycock Abbey to see huge displays of Harry Bloody Potter (to give him his full name). On business trips, I went through the County of Shakespeare and the County of Robin Hood. The Scottish prefer to use the disgusting Braveheart film to attract tourists, ignoring their great record for doctors, writers, composers, scientists, inventors, and at least one great explorer. London has the Jack the Ripper Experience (or tour). A couple of days ago, I read that Ancoats, for many years one of Manchester's worst slums (and there were plenty of competitors) is now 'a happening neighbourhood'. Attempts to find accurate history of this or any other city district are always bogged down in the perpetual complaints about the poor people of the past. Peterloo is a popular one in Manchester, along with the poor Irish. Bristol has no history now but slave trading, and perhaps for good measure, tobacco.
But it isn't just this sort of puerile opportunism that is damaging history. As a child, I knew that Alfred the Great burnt some cakes. Very little, if anything, else. Every child knows of Henry the Eighth, but only because he had six wives and executed some of them. How many children know about Henry the Seventh? We have books and films about Robin Hood and King Arthur, who didn't exist; and nothing about Willikin of the Weald, who did. We need to go back, not just to teach history, but to learn it, by trying to unravel the truth from the lies. History has been written by churchmen, victorious royalty and their supporters, by unscrupulous politicians, and by moralisers. Thus, Oliver Cromwell has been the subject of disgraceful lies, by priests, Restoration monarchists, and, as I recall, by Arthur Mee in his Encyclopaedias. We need collectively to study history without the caricatures, the propaganda, and blatant ignorance. We need to avoid assessment, but if not, to base assessment on the proper criteria, not on wars won, passing popularity, or on our political prejudices. The greatest figures of the nineteenth century were not Gladstone, Disraeli and Palmerston: they were Lord Shaftesbury, Michael Sadler, Richard Oastler; and many others. We need to study poverty, and the horrors of mill, mine and factory working without class-driven propaganda. We need to study great women without its being propaganda of feminism. We need to stop treating history as matters of good and bad, of rich and poor, of oppressor and victim. We need to make ordinary matters interesting, which they were.