Watching History
An excellent series, A History of Scotland, has been playing on BBC Scotland. The most recent episode, “Bishop Makes King”, dealt with Robert the Bruce, who seemed to enact aspects of the Shakespearean kings in real life. Like Henry V, he was a fine warrior and a savvy tactician. Like Macbeth, he slaughtered many in the process of consolidating power. His final years were full of illness and with a conscience sickened by his sins of sacrilege. A tired old compromised king, like Henry IV. Those huge heroic statues of him shed their stoniness and became scarred flesh. The king was put into the context of his time, when to unite Scotland he had to get the Church on side. There is no modern equivalent – the Church was as partisan and ruthless as the Murdoch press but also had the monopoly on propaganda, and bishops could raise their own armed forces.
A History of Scotland is a first person documentary, with the talking head, Neil Oliver, taking you over battlefields and poring over parchment documents like the Declaration of Arbroath. There is a little reconstruction, when a couple of bearded fellows pull out swords, but mostly you focus on the presenter’s words. Neil Oliver shows the right amount of serious passion for his subject. He is not bouncing in and out of helicopters or running around busily, or otherwise distracting you from the material. The scenery is grand, among the hills or in sun dappled woods or in ruined castles. It has great atmosphere.
Another history documentary on at present is World War II: Behind Closed Doors. It is in the third person, that is there’s a narrator on the sound track rather than a talking head. Actors play characters, e.g. Stalin on the phone, shouting in Russian, sub-titled in English. There are also interviews with those who actually experienced the events (record them while you still can). Again, it is a detailed look at what happened, without any thesis to expound. It’s pretty good, giving you a sense of the cunning and shiftiness of politicians, and with the fear as well for those politicians under dictatorships. One scene that sticks in my mind is Stalin asking his Cabinet if they should abandon Moscow, speaking to them as if to a group of school children, and when no-one puts up his hand, singling them out in turn. You can imagine the dread of giving the wrong answer.
These documentaries seem to me to be superior to recent Starkey and Schama series, which each had a thesis. Schama’s A History of Britain was about the development of liberty and democracy in the UK, Starkey’s Monarchy about the necessity of monarchy, and they seemed to be obviously marshalling evidence for the defence of their big idea. Also, both Starkey and Schama have become insufferable as personalities.
In another kind of historical documentary you have experts being interviewed for about ten seconds each, as if they were celebrities on Channel 4’s Hundred Greatest Gross Outs. That style insults the historian and his life’s work, and insults the viewer as well.
Here’s a lazy list of my favourite history documentaries. As happens in these lazy lists, giants, however ancient, remain in your memory, while small workmanlike programmes are forgotten, unless they are recent.
1. The World at War I can hear Carl Davis’s score and see those burning photographs in my mind now. It’s harrowing to watch.
2. The Civil War Photos, diaries and letters flow together in a haunting and beautiful account of the American Civil War.
3. A History of Scotland Excellent so far.
4. Battlefield Britain I found myself rooting for Harold and the English at the Battle of Hastings then for Owain Glyndwr and the Welsh at the Battle for Wales. Exciting stuff.
5. Christina, A Medieval Woman One I saw recently, which explained ownership of property and the power of church courts in medieval times. I’ll forget it soon, but it was a neat low-key programme, giving some idea on how history is researched, through church records and the like.
Comments
| 27 November, 2008, 11:36 pm |
At least two of the series’ you flag up owe an awful lot to the below:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/World-War-Great-Complete-Disc/dp/B0000634BA
| 28 November, 2008, 2:18 am |
I didn’t think much of battlefield britain. Actors being interviewed as if they were eyewitnesses talking to a news crew, yuck. Iirc There was another snow & son series about non british battlefields that was about as gimmick ridden but less annoying cos they didn’t use the actors.
| 28 November, 2008, 3:01 pm |
Ken Burns magnificent US documentaries on the American civil war and the westward expansion of the state must rank in the top five for me. In this country I think that BBC4’s fine arts coverage in general is really excellent.
Negatives are anything with ‘reconstructions’ especially when they talk to camera (dumbing down), and docs where you keep seeing the filmmaker in shot, ‘oh look I am filming in front of a mirror’ (self indulgent).
| 28 November, 2008, 7:07 pm |
I have just read up on A History of Scotland on the BBC website. Sounds like a good series, but why is it shown only on BBC Scotland? I’m sure they could have found a late evening slot on one of the main BBC channels for it.
Have to agree with you on the World at War and The Civil War. They, along with The Great War mentioned by Graham, are still the outstanding greats of TV history series.
I think they work so well because the voices of those who witnessed or took part are crucial to aiding our understanding and appreciation of events. An historian describing the Battle of Gettysburg adds to our knowledge of the conflict. An actor reading aloud a young soldier’s letter home to his mother allows us to fully share the experiences and emotions of the men who did the fighting. It gives history a human face and brings it to life in a way that few conventionally-presented programmes can. The effect is magnified, of course, when the accounts are given by actual participants, as in The World at War.
Personally, I enjoyed Band of Brothers for this very reason. I know that it is history packaged as entertainment, but each episode began and ended with interviews with the actual men depicted in the series. Know that the genteel, grey-haired old guy speaking was once confronted by a schoolboy in German uniform during a battle, and was forced to kill him, and you know why, even fifty years later, his voice breaks as he talks about his war.
| 28 November, 2008, 7:34 pm |
I join in the accolades for “The Civil War.” If you haven’t seen it before (or maybe if you have), this segment will make yours eyes moisten.
Does anyone write letters (let alone emails) like that any more?
| 29 November, 2008, 2:50 pm |
I should have put in the Great War series. I saw it when I was little - I’m surprised now that my parents let me see it, as it has some horrifying images.
Joseph K - I think they plan to show the History of Scotland in England later. The English, or rather Edward I, comes out very badly, not just an imperialist sod but a contemptuous imperialist sod bent on humiliation as well as conquest. Have a feeling that this series will encourage Scottish nationalism (boo!).
I think Band of Brothers is great - especially that bit when the German general gives a speech to the defeated Germans about comradeship which is translated by the German speaking American soldier to the American soldiers. The other dramatic reconstruction that I think is brilliant is Conspiracy with Kenneth Branagh about the Wannsee conference.
| 29 November, 2008, 4:27 pm |
Interesting the process by which a partly-Norman King motivated mainly by a feudal desire that his family should have power and who eliminated his enemies whilst treating his vassals like shit should become an anti-imperialist Scottish hero…
The Civil war kept me glued to the TV over Xmas lunchtimes for a couple of weeks a few years back - great stuff.
| 29 November, 2008, 7:02 pm |
Thanks for the nod, KB. I looked it up and yes, it’s due to air “down south” in 2009. Good - I like Neil Oliver’s style of presenting.
Conspiracy was excellent too. I was working in the Civil Service when it was first shown, and the procedural details and cold bureaucratic language were frighteningly familiar. The next day in the office a lot of people said the same thing: “OMG, we’re just like them.”
| 29 November, 2008, 11:15 pm |
I’ve been catching up on a lot of ken Burns lately. Lewis and Clark and The Shakers were pretty good. (I also saw a great bit about Frank Lloyd Wright.
I tried to watch “New York” but it seemed padded and overlong. Maybe I’ll try again later.
| 30 November, 2008, 12:18 am |
The English, or rather Edward I, comes out very badly, not just an imperialist sod but a contemptuous imperialist sod bent on humiliation as well as conquest.
Are you sure? He was presented as a hard-nosed bugger, to be sure, but one who was up for the task and was prepared to behave no differently from Scots kings. Just that he could.
Certainly, the march of Alexander II was not glorified in any way. I was surprised to find out that it was himself who’d ordered an infant girl - rival claimant - to have her head stoved-in at Falkirk. I am certain I’d previously read this attributed to England-aligned nobility.
Have a feeling that this series will encourage Scottish nationalism (boo!).
Granted I’ve caught it while moving about the place (accustomed the listening to the radio), but I’ve got exactly the opposite impression. These grubby sectarians will get het up about the slightest affair. My bank which last week attempted to charge me over £100 for three over-spends totalling less than £4, and which were paid back the next working day. A bank which also, speaking to a friend who’s a financial advisor at C.A.B., is one of the most truculent with customers’ seeking help.
My bank is H.B.o.S.
Yet, the narrative is that it was good Scottish stock which should have remained (or the 20% of it was was British based) in Edinburgh.
| 6 December, 2008, 5:27 pm |
“Also, both Starkey and Schama have become insufferable as personalities.”
Starkey is unpleasant. Schama too pleased with himself and completely ‘Guardianista’ in his analysis. I actually found his programmes offensively anti-British. He seems not to have looked around him much, and contrasted Britishness unfavourably with somewhere else as frequently as humanly possible, partly I supposed in order to sell the programme in the USA.
The First World War, narrated by Michael Redgrave was memorably good. Up until that time (early 1960s) all film taken at the time was played ’speeded up’; shot at 16 frames and second it was comstomarily shown at 24 frames a second, so men and machines sped about. It was comic.
The the BBC technicians found a way of slowing it down and I will never forget how what once had seemed quaint and ridiculous became achingly sad and affecting as young men with old faces blinked back at the camera, puzzlement changing to smiles.
| 6 December, 2008, 5:31 pm |
We oldies would really appreciate a Preview button, y’know.
| 13 December, 2008, 11:29 am |
Does anyone write letters (let alone emails) like that any more?
This post is slipping off the edge now but I just read something about the American Civil War in the London Review of Books which I thought was relevant.
“By one estimate, an astonishing 180,000 letters passed through the hands of Civil War soldiers every single day. . .Images of men and families proliferated in daguerrotypes; photographs and engravings of photographs brought the sites of the battlefield home. In short, the whole modern paraphenalia of memory was for the first time almost universally available in this war. At the same time, the domestic novel and short story, along with accounts in scores of denominational magazines and secular newspapers, made ordinary family life and ordinary family death their special subject.”
The writing that these soldiers read would have been the Bible, of course, and their fiction would have been full of moral uplift. They would have no compunction about being serious.
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