11. Feb, 2017

How We Learn About the Past Today

The modern history programme is a very different beast from the respectfully viewed lecture style of old.  On any given evening, you may find tasters of the past, where people romp through the experiences of a decade on consecutive nights, in a dazzle of delights or puzzled revulsion.  Calves head?  Turtle Soup?  Servants?  Lovely hats!  The family are quirky, the mother slightly stooping and tall, the father like an ebullient Edwardian himself in all the eras, stocky and sandy, large nosed and exhuberant.  The girls and the younger brother politely go along with things, the children indulging the parents in the venture, it seems.  No one is facetious about it, which must be difficult.  I imagine the outtakes are interesting.

Or there's Professor Lucy Worsley, who hogs all the parts for herself, immersed in her dressing up box, like the showoff at a children's party.  Occasionally, other historians she speaks to during the programme are a little sniffy, which she responds to by twinkling to camera conspiratorially for her audience. She can't say her 'r's properly but builds it into her style and delivers all her narratives with gusto and great relish.  She potters about the historic backdrops alone in a bright red coat, her blond bobbed fringe clipped back with a diamante slide, as if she's looking for the other three of the four Marys (a feature in Bunty, a comic for girls, about some prosy public schoolgirls, who always did the right thing).

And then there's ancient history, currently residing mainly among the iron age and bronze age forts of Scotland, or belting around somewhere like Sicely, where you can have a good old natter about living with the mafia. 

It's hard to imagine, with this kaleidescope of active participation by presenters, dolloping out history like pudding, the scale of time involved and real complexities of change, but to gain that knowledge, you'd have to read a book or two and the programme makers don't seem to think anyone would have time for that.  So history comes sweet and condensed, or evaporates soon after viewing.