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.

Let there be dark

I am, it has to be said, a huge fan of Hilary Mantel's books Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies.  I think I have previously written about going to see the stage plays in fact.

I was dreadfully nervous about the current television adaptation because so often, such things just do not live up to your expectations.  We all form such personal pictures in our heads when we read books that it is virtually impossible to please everyone with television or stage representations.  The best series are, in my humble opinion, the ones which best capture the essence of a book.

This morning, it has been reported that the Wolf Hall film-makers spent over £20,000 on candles.  A lot of the reporting since the series started has focussed on the low level lighting used.  People complaining that they can't see the "action" and so on.

Whilst agreeing that this is a large amount to spend on candles (a (candle)stick of which the Daily Mail will make good use, to beat the BBC!), I absolutely love the atmosphere created by the candles.  Finally, I thought after the first episode, we can see how it must have been.  It really was possible to be lurking in corners and hiding in rooms where people were exchanging confidences.  It was dark!

There is a tendency to look back at history - whether our own family's or the state's - through the view which we have today.  Perpetual light whenever and wherever we want it.  We find it impossible to believe that people could have lived in a world where you gathered around candles every evening or just went to bed.  I lived in a Victorian house until recently.  I never did truly experience it as it's original owners did though.  Even turning off the lights would not give me a Victorian view of the house - there was a dirty great street lamp of the worst orange sort right outside the house!  I was forced to get blackout blinds to get any quality of sleep!

Only a power cut can give any kind of authenticity and even those are often limited to one row of houses these days.  A city is never truly dark - car lights, torches, phones, emergency generators, you name it, we can combat the dark with it.  What are we afraid of?

I have ancestors who drove trains across India, who guarded Napoleon on St Helena, who did actually trade in the City of London in the 1600's, who worked in service at great houses.  They truly lived in  the dark.  The light from a roaring steam engine, firelight, flaming torches, carrying candles for their master to make his way to bed.  That was it.  Blips of light in a dark landscape.

Wolf Hall shows us how it felt to live in Tudor times.  It is not just a piece of "action".  It would be fascinating to see more plays and adaptations done in the same way.  Talk about shedding a whole new light on the subject....