Leaving A Dent

Helen Dunmore, who sadly died this year, wrote an afterword for her last novel Birdcage Walk in which she talks about her interest in how very few people make any mark on history.  History as future generations will know it is written by a privileged few who all have their own spin to put on events.  The vast majority of us will have to be content with having been a part of the big picture, despite huge output on social and other media types.  Hardly any people stand the test of time and are remembered.  Even people who may have been mildly famous (or infamous) for a period often are forgotten by the next generation.  Wouldn't it be interesting to see, in a century, if anyone knew what Instagram had been?  Who Beyonce or Taylor Swift were?  Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep?  Which books had stood the test of time?  And as for politicians, well, each UK Parliament has 650 Members.  How many of those will leave a dent where they sat?  Even in their constituency's history?

There was an article recently about the imminent return of Peaky Blinders - can't wait - and apparently a new major character will be a female trade unionist and political activist named Jessie Eden.  She was a real person.  Who achieved amazing things.  But how many people will have ever heard of her before now?  Well-known and influential at the time.  But part of a much bigger picture of discontent and unrest in the Twenties and Thirties therefore consigned in accounts of that period to a footnote if she is lucky.

Banding together is more powerful in any situation.  That is not to say that one person should not do or say what feels right to them.  Look at Rose McGowan recently.  Someone has to start each ball rolling.  But if we are to make a real mark, leave a proper dent, it seems to me that the best way is to find like-minded people and work as one.  

Look Both Ways

A little while ago, someone said to me that their life was always about going forward.  They didn't understand why some people either want or need to understand certain events from their past or why those people might still have fears generated by those situations.

I have thought about this a great deal.  Do people focus too much on what has happened to them previously?  Is it self indulgent to do so?  And I must say  I really don't agree.  Whatever has happened to you or around you (especially in childhood) is what has shaped you.  For better or worse. If you think have the ability to only look forwards, then that in itself, it seems to me, is a learnt skill.  A decision not to be affected by events or others.  Single minded yes, but necessarily helpful to those around them.

But if that's how you roll, good for you.  However, I think many (most?) of us have things from our past which we know affect us still.  Whether familial or professional.  Over the years, I have spent a fair amount of time with therapists.  Post-natal depression turned out to be a bit deeper and becoming a parent raised all sorts of questions about my own upbringing.  Even this year, I went to a therapist for a few months because there were things I needed to work through.  I felt I needed to learn in order to go forwards. 

This blog has often tried to think about how the wider past affects us.  I have regularly written about  learning from history.  Quite recently I wrote that I was seeming more political than family history orientated on the blog but that I felt it was justified in these uncertain times.  The thread of family history runs from the past to the future and I feel we have a responsibility to our descendants when it comes to the threat of nuclear war or to the implications of Brexit, etc.

In fact, as I write the news channels are full of the breakthrough of the Far Right in Germany's elections.  Buoyed no doubt by the refugee crises and by the racist, sexist White House occupant.  If ever there was a reason why we must keep looking back in order to move on, this is it.  These people feed on discontent and on each other's bravado and they spread disinformation.  I don't believe we should simply face forwards in our personal lives and I definitely don't believe it in our political lives.  Learn from history.

[By the way, on a lighter 'the past affects us' note, I still have flashbacks to the vile boss I had at one City job and to certain amateur dramatics humiliations, to name but two.  What about you?]

Valid History

 

 

Last night, on Simon Mayo's Drivetime, it was Book Club night and the book being discussed sounded really fascinating.  The Truth According To Us by Annie Barrows is set in small town America in the Depression era.  I cannot comment on the book as I have not yet read it.  [Although I have now added it to the ever growing list of "must read" along with many Sunday supplement clippings, the Woman & Home Reading Room recommendations, my own local book club and the research for my fledgling creative writing.  No pressure...]

 

One discussion concerned "what is history".  Apparently, the book deals with the writing of a small town's history and the struggle to make sense of past events in the light of age-old grudges and warped memories.  Annie Barrows agreed very much with a comment that history is "about who writes it".  Very dependent on how someone or some organisation or some nation wants to be remembered.  Ms Barrows said that history is just a construct, not factual at all, "just a bunch of stories".

 

And I feel this resonates with many of my blog subjects in the last year.  Family history is what we make of it in the present generation.  My blog about The Demon Drink is an example.  Posts on how disease actually affected a family would be another.

 

John Hurt spent the whole of his Who Do You Think You Are? episode firmly convinced that he somehow came from Irish aristocracy.  He had been told so many tales over his life time that he had even convinced himself of a natural affinity with the country.  It was not true.  But it had coloured his family's view of themselves for generations.

 

Last weekend, I was reading a BBC History magazine (I know - my life is just so exciting...).  One of the articles was a revisionist view of the War of the Roses.  The author believes, along with many others, that Tudor propaganda aimed at cementing that family's position was responsible for substantially altering views of the pre-Tudor period.  He said, though, that it was not just down to primitive propaganda.  It was due to Shakespeare wanting to excite audiences, it was down to thrilling tales passed down and exaggerated between generations, and so on.

 

Look at Wolf Hall.  Tudor history rewritten in the twenty first century.  Thomas Cromwell has been a well known historical villain, of sorts, for centuries.  Now, after Hilary Mantel has finished with him, we are all feeling rather sorry for him and desperate for him not to die in the (please finish it soon, Hilary!) last of the trilogy.  Even though the fact of his death is one of the few certainties of his story.

 

Winston Churchill said "History is written by the victors".  Did you ever hear of a world famous book or film about German POWs escaping?  And what about Hiroshima's sufferings? 

 

It is not just victors though.  It is perception.  It is feelings.  In this blog, I have tried to look at how certain facts may have made participants feel and/or influenced their decisions.  I agree with Annie Barrows' assessment of history to a degree.  But history is no less valid for taking account of prevailing feelings, fashions, fortunes and families.