A History of Britain by Simon Schama: Series Promotional Message

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Simon Schama journeys through 5,000 years of life in the British Isles.   A History of Britain Extras: Interesting "promotional message" to camera in which Schama explains the role of a cab driver named Wally, who inspired the series.   Watch Complete Series:  https://dailymotion.com/playlist/x8t1po

Transcript

00:00Well, I'm sorry I can't be with you as much as I'd love to, but you see me here virtually

00:25under house arrest until I finish this mighty epic of both the television series and the

00:30book, A History of Britain, my History of Britain, inevitably a subjective and personal

00:37point of view, but one I was really glad to do nonetheless. There are all sorts of reasons

00:43to answer that serious question, not another History of Britain, why another one? And I

00:49guess the most compelling right now is because of our entering a new phase of our relationship

00:56with Europe and with the rest of the world. Where Britain goes depends largely I think

01:02on where we think we've come from. Who we are going to be depends very much on who we

01:06think we were once upon a time. Who we are now depends again on our telling stories about

01:13our past as well as our present, and then thinking a little bit more clearly, a bit

01:18more imaginatively perhaps about our future. Well, these are all very good kind of political

01:24science topic of the week reasons to do a History of Britain, but if you really want

01:29to know why I took this mad task on, the answer is Wally. Wally. Wally was one of the many

01:36cab drivers who steered me through London, who knew and still knows a lot more about

01:41British history than I do, and he was driving me to Broadcasting House one day. I was actually

01:46not talking about this series but about some art history I was doing, and he asked me what

01:51I was doing with television and radio. I told him, and he pulled up at the lights, pulled

01:56over actually to the pavement just before Lower Regent Street, pulled out this colossal

02:02book about British history, just enormous, and looked at me with sad, deep, knowing eyes

02:09and said, he said, that's just what I want to have done. I said, I'll tell you why. It's

02:14a sad story. So we both got out our Kleenexes and he said, you know, I took all the O-Levels

02:21and I didn't care about any of them. The only one I wanted to pass was history. And I knew

02:26what was coming. It was a terrible moment. And he said, guess what? I failed history.

02:31And I never think I'm worthy of it ever since. I said, Wally, relax. History is not about

02:37O-Level. History is about telling stories. This 16th part of this book is going to be

02:42for you. Because Wally turned out, of course, to be an enormous kind of professor who happened

02:47to be driving a cab. He was wonderful. And the passion for history lies deep in all us

02:52British, I think, not just us English, but for better or worse among the Welsh, Scotch,

02:57Irish with whom we've had a troubled but deep and very close and hot relationship. We're

03:04all part of a single family and sometimes, as in all families, people fall out. The mums

03:10and dads don't get along with the kids. The various brothers and sisters and cousins

03:14want to kill each other and sometimes do. That's part of the story too. And that's part

03:19of the story we have to tell. But we have to tell the story of this family over and

03:24again if we're going to have a sense of our place in the world and in time. And the stories

03:30are just fantastic. No matter how much you tell them, you never quite know, which is

03:35why I'm grateful for the chance of writing this book and filming this series, how compelling

03:40and moving they are. I'm sure you all know about the Battle of Hastings, but how many

03:45of you know about Harold's brother, his little brother Tostig, with whom he fell out so badly

03:51that Tostig devoted the rest of his life to try to kill Harold of Wessex, King Harold

03:58II? This was so important, you could argue that this was this war between brothers which

04:04finally knocked off Anglo-Saxon England. It's a very moving and rather extraordinary

04:08and improbable story. You all know about the death of Thomas Beckett and the murder in

04:12Canterbury Cathedral. But there are moments there which are unlooked for and extraordinary

04:17too when the monks finally crept from behind the pillars, thought it was safe and saw this

04:22terrible sight of Thomas Beckett with the top of his head sliced off, literally lying

04:27on the floor. They gently took his clothes off and for the first time, all these people

04:32who'd known Thomas Beckett discovered for years he'd been wearing a hair shirt secretly,

04:38the nastiest piece of underwear ever invented. And in the hair shirt, lice were running around.

04:45This man had wanted to torment himself even before he got the chop. Stories like this

04:51of well-known people and of not so well-known people too are the kind of excitement and

04:57heartbreak which really put us all in the story. Perhaps the most moving moment yet

05:03was when we went to film in the Foundling Hospital and made me think about the fate

05:07of dead babies in the London of the 1700s. There was this old sea captain called Thomas

05:13Coram who was just sick literally of stepping over dead babies who'd been abandoned by their

05:19sad destitute mothers and started this Foundling Hospital, the building's still there in Coram

05:26Fields in Holborn. And you can go there and you can see the story of the foundation of

05:32this wonderful place but what you can see which is really upsetting and makes you think

05:37again about the complicated relationship between compassion and cruelty are trays and trays

05:43of little objects, little rings, little ribbons. These are the things that the girls, sometimes

05:49they were rich but naughty girls, more often they were poor girls, these are the things

05:53that the mums gave the babies before they were going to give the babies away, before

06:00they said goodbye to them, deliver them to the tender mercies of the Foundling Hospitals.

06:05One was just a little hazelnut, just a little hazelnut with a hole drilled through it where

06:09the baby could put a string round it and it would wear it round its neck as a keepsake

06:13of the mother. The problem was, you ask yourself as an historian, well how come all this stuff

06:18survives? Answer, of course, these things never ever got to the kids because the fathers

06:26of the Foundling Hospitals in their wisdom said, no good, got to start off on a new page,

06:32no good actually than being troubled by memories of their past. So it's a real heartbreaker.

06:39Well we want you to be excited and exhilarated and moved and disturbed, we want you to have

06:44your life changed by thinking again about these old stories. So change my life, that's

06:49for sure, and I hope they do the same for you, all for the best. And if you want a little

06:56taster of what the series and the book is going to have in store for you, here it is.

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