A History of Britain by Simon Schama: The Rest is History with Mark Lawson

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Simon Schama journeys through 5,000 years of life in the British Isles.   A History of Britain Extras: An introduction to the documentary series A History of Britain. Mark Lawson talks to Simon Schama about the background to the series.   Watch Complete Series:  https://dailymotion.com/playlist/x8t1po

Transcript

00:00But although the series is made on a huge scale, its hopes finally focus on one man,

00:24a British academic now living in America, and the author of acclaimed books on Rembrandt

00:29and the French Revolution, among other subjects, Professor Simon Sharma.

00:33Simon Sharma, you were part of the first generation able to watch history programs on television.

00:37Did they make an impact on you?

00:39Enormous.

00:40A.J.P.

00:41Taylor, great hero, pioneer of the arts, gave what I suppose you'd call a lecture.

00:47There was no set, there was no location, not a man walking around in ruins.

00:53Just black.

00:54But out of that black, out of Taylor's combination of storytelling and wit and argument, was

01:01amazingly powerful performance, all done without notes, because the world was inside him.

01:07It just came tumbling out, natural storyteller, natural arguer as storyteller, and that was

01:13wonderful and made me want to attempt to be one.

01:17One of the reasons this kind of television went out of fashion for a while in the 90s

01:22was an unease about the fact of one person presenting, because people, as you know,

01:27will say, well, he's white, he's male, he's British, he lives in America now, all of those

01:32things.

01:33Now, you don't, which would have been one alternative, allow other voices into the series.

01:38In a way, when you have a subjective essay, actually, the kind of consensus trap is avoided.

01:45You know it's just Sharma's, you know, stories and arguments about what British history,

01:52the road British history has taken.

01:54The danger for me is that in the United States, at least, you have two African-Americans and

02:01then you have two white rednecks and then you have, you know, two women and two men

02:06and a child and a granny or something.

02:08So somehow out of this perfectly arranged salad of opinions, a totally coherent and

02:14satisfying and tasty dish, which will not offend anyone, and you'll leave the program

02:19saying yes, that is how it was in 1938 or 1258 or something.

02:25I would much rather, actually, people take issue with me, get mad as hell, write back

02:31saying, you know, why does this particular king or, you know, this particular peasant

02:37rebellion fly past at warp speed?

02:39And that's much better.

02:41That does seem to me in the nature.

02:44The most compelling history is the most kind of shamelessly, personally engaged.

02:49So I'm happy with that format.

02:52But people will be looking for your stars.

02:56Would you be saying you were objective in this?

02:58No, God, no, it's not a word I ever, you know, I've never felt, I'm not a complete relativist

03:05either.

03:06I don't believe there is no such thing as historical truth.

03:07It's just incredibly complicated and difficult to get there.

03:10And as soon as the D word is indefinitive, passes your lips, the other D word is true,

03:14you're dead, you know, really.

03:17So note the careful use of the indefinite article in this series.

03:22This is called A History of Britain.

03:24And both the first word and the last word in that title are problematic.

03:28It's A History because it's shamelessly my own subjective interpretation of this, you

03:34know, these thousands of years of history.

03:37Because Britain itself has, you know, been an axiomatic nation for a very short time.

03:45And you know, it was a problematic nation in the way in which it came into being in

03:48the 17th and 18th century and remains something which is not constant and sempiternal, but

03:56actually something always in a state of flux and change.

03:59So my view is A, it's certainly subjective.

04:03And it is a series about the nature of changing national identity.

04:07That's one of our big stories in the series.

04:11And I'm now asking you to reduce 16 Hours and the huge book into a few sentences, but

04:18if you could give a sense of the stance, I mean, the approach, the argument you're taking

04:22through the series.

04:23Right.

04:24Well, in the first instance, the sense in which there is a kind of septodile history,

04:29but there is Churchillian history, there is white, Protestant, parliamentary Britain.

04:36That we now really reject so emphatically, in my view, that actually we may be in danger

04:44of losing some fundamental truths that are still there.

04:48So even though this is a series, which as I say in the preface of the book, any history

04:53series about Britain has to be about alteration, the alteration from empire to a multicultural

04:58Britain, the alteration from a French-speaking, Norman, baronial place to something that suddenly

05:06becomes very self-conscious about its Englishness at a point.

05:10There is some kind of bedrock of weird peculiarity at the heart of it all.

05:16It wasn't just fantasy that in the middle of the 13th century, we had a huge uprising

05:23of both people and barons against the Plantagenet dynasty after Magna Carta.

05:28Nothing like that happened anywhere else in feudal Europe.

05:32So I'm kind of wanting to bring these elements of mutation, change, shifting identity and

05:39things that have always been there in negotiation with each other, in argument with each other.

05:45Number two, this is the history of Britain, not just history of England with walk-on roles

05:48for the Scots and the Irish and the Welsh.

05:51You don't have to be kind of ethnically correct about Britain, you know, to actually see that

05:57there was a troubled history.

05:59But you only sort of are honest really about the nature of British history if you face

06:04up to the fact there are an awful lot of skeletons in our particular family closet.

06:09And an example of those skeletons that you're bringing out?

06:13Well, religion is a huge story.

06:16I mean, for a lapsed Jew to be doing this is either an incredible joke, you know, or

06:20actually a very good idea, because I certainly have no stake in the goodness or badness of

06:26the Reformation, but it's a riveting story for me.

06:30We have, in my view, the British wars of religion that go on until the middle of the 18th century.

06:37It's an endless horror, actually, in the story of our country's history.

06:43And because we are possibly now the most secular country in the world, you know, I don't know,

06:48certainly in the Western world, religion just seems so remote somehow as something

06:56which people are going to die for and get excited about and have heart attacks about.

07:01And lives and deaths of both the mighty and the humble were going to turn on this issue

07:06of allegiance.

07:08And the kind of raveling together of what you are as a people and what you are as a

07:11church is just extraordinarily important.

07:14And 16 hours sounds like a lot, and it is in terms of TV, but you've got 5,000 years,

07:19so that process of choosing the events and themes, can you talk about how you navigate that?

07:25Yeah, we always, inclusiveness is impossible.

07:28In some ways, one shouldn't, you know, whine about this, because it's what you do when

07:32you're writing a history book, in any case.

07:35So history is brutally always a matter of selection.

07:38However, there's brutal and brutal, and then there's television.

07:43And we did a terrible thing, which, you know, everybody, sorry, all you Richard III lovers.

07:48He flies past, because when we did the Wars of the Roses, which we do do, I wanted, it

07:54seemed to me, if you're, this whole kind of meltdown of politics in the 15th century comes

08:00about not as a result of anything Richard III does, but as a result, as Shakespeare

08:04knew, of what happens to Richard II.

08:07That is the moment when the chains of loyalty are smashed, when Richard II is deposed.

08:15We spend a lot of time on Richard II.

08:17And what happens in the Wars of the Roses, they're all these kind of, you know, they're

08:23all these kind of hurray Henrys whacking each other at the ends of a field, you know, as

08:27we, and what actually happens to people, really, ordinary people and gents as well, both toughs

08:35and tuffs, happens in something called the Paston Letters.

08:39These are the first private correspondence in English of any kind, extraordinary family

08:45in Norfolk, both extraordinary and ordinary, lived in Norfolk, who make it in three generations

08:50from a peasant farmer to castle-owning gents of the shire.

08:55And their correspondence is absolutely fantastically wonderful, because it really, it's where shopping

09:02meets bloodthirsty battles.

09:05Literally, there are letters about shopping and the impossibility of getting a good dress,

09:08you know, one of the wonderful ladies, but you're also fighting off these thugs who belong

09:12to the Duke of Norfolk.

09:13So you choose between yet another Plantagenet king and bringing people close to the Pastons.

09:21We, I, chose the Pastons.

09:25As the year 2000 approached, politicians became obsessed with talking about the future and

09:30getting it on the internet and all of that.

09:32And in fact, culture rather surprised them, because popular history became this big, best-selling

09:38literary genre, movies were increasingly about history, Elizabeth I, Shakespeare in Love,

09:45and so on.

09:46Yeah, how dare the dead intrude in cyberspace, you know, really.

09:49They're always going to, you know.

09:51I mean, the funny thing is that, actually, there's this curious kind of coming around

09:56in a circle and the ends touching, that there are some things about our need to know where

10:02we've come from that trails around after us, wherever it is we're going.

10:09And at one point, you know, it's just simply fat-headed to think that, because you're sitting

10:14in front of a computer, part of the global village, that we are utterly dislocated, we

10:19have no moorings whatsoever, no languages separate us out, no paths separate us out.

10:25Of course they do.

10:27And maybe if we are tending towards a kind of more homogeneous global culture, all the

10:33more reason why, it's not just, you know, it's not kind of schoolmasterish point, all

10:37the more reason why people do want some sense of colour and particularity about their own

10:44story and the story of their religion or the story of their nation or the story of their

10:48ethnic group or whatever, or their football team, whatever it's going to be.

10:52Simon Sharma, thank you.

10:53You're welcome.

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