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PART I
The Popular historian
The following three chapters consider the figure of the historian in public, civic and cultural life in order to begin to perceive what contributing factors there might be in a construction of understanding of, and engagement with – and consumption of – ‘the past’. The section as a whole analyses the status and representation of the historian in culture in order to conceptualise the various ‘uses’ of history. Ludmilla Jordanova reminds us: ‘The past is essentially open-ended, and accounts of it are public property, available for numerous uses. Recognising this should help historians to see their own activities in a wider perspective and to raise broad questions about the practice of history.’1 Understanding how the ‘historian’ themselves are articulated enables a reflection upon the ways that the past is consumed, and opens up this ‘wider perspective’. Similarly John Tosh argues that popular culture ‘is only incidentally concerned to understand the past on its own terms’ and, again, we need to think about how the historian is conceptualised and imagined in order to see how this understanding works.2
What can the figure of the media historian – both in terms of their practice and their representation – tell us about contemporary conceptions of the subject? Chapter 1 considers the impact and importance of the ‘celebrity’ historian. The phenomenon of ‘celebrity’ is analysed, with a consideration of the impact and importance of the ‘celebrity’ historian, ranging from authors of cultural history to television presenters. The demands upon such ‘public’ historians – market, production, audience – affect their work. How does the very public historian present complexity and sell nuance? How does the status of Simon Schama, Mary Beard, Bettany Hughes and Dan Snow influence their standing as historical authorities? Whilst populist the celebrity historian is still interested in presenting a ‘truth’ and in authoring or controlling that truth. It is important to understand how celebrity intersects with historical documentary in order to comprehend the status of these new histories. Historians have become public figures of authority and influence in a way somewhat reminiscent of that accorded to E. P. Thompson, A. J. P Taylor and Christopher Hill a generation ago, but with multiple new dimensions in this celebrity-craving time.3 Nationally renowned historians have become abstracted from the academic arena, becoming cultural commentators. Linda Colley writes political columns for national newspapers; Tristram Hunt is a Labour MP; David Starkey appears on Question Time and Jamie’s Dream School; Richard Holmes canvases for votes in BBC1’s The Big Read. This chapter, then, considers these new contexts for the historian in public. These contexts include celebrity, cultural representation and the erosion of the authority of the academic expert, before investigating the most famous – or infamous – ‘public’ historian of the last few decades, David Irving.
It is worth briefly reflecting on the relationship of the professional university historian to the historian in public. The celebritising of the academic profession – the creation of ‘star’ professors and the increasing commodification associated with this – has been critiqued as a direct consequence of the increasing commercialisation of the university sector.4 The relationship between ‘academic capital’ and more wider ‘cultural capital’ is complex but brokered by entrepreneurial universities aiming at increasing their market share and competitiveness. The figure of the historian has something of a unique position in the ongoing debate about the ‘value’ of the humanities.5 Professional historians are increasingly attempting to bridge the divide between academy and public, be it prompted by the UK funding council’s desire for research ‘impact’ or simply because they have seen the popularity of writing historical fiction and accessible historical narratives.6 That said, most academic historians remain worried about the movement between academic and popular history.7 Most recently, Keith Joseph has publicly worried that too many young historians are being tempted away from university to ‘produce a historical bestseller’.8
As Joe Moran points out, it used to be the case that star academics were little known outside of the university sector. More recently, however, this scholarly membrane has become more permeable, and increasingly high-level appointments are being made in order to boost a department or university’s brand recognition. Nearly every ‘public’ historian included in this book is associated with a university, quite unlike many critics or public cultural figures. This might demonstrate that an academic imprimatur is still necessary to legitimise the historian presenter. Furthermore, it also suggests that the celebrity historian model is a poor fit – historians are famous for their work, primarily, and then their fame. In a society in which fame begets fame, the historian has something material to point to in order to justify their existence in the public mind.9
These chapters develop Ludmilla Jordanova’s idea of ‘genre’ to consider how ‘history’ as a textual form is sold – mainly through the consideration of books and magazines – with particular attention paid to the dynamism and complexity of this ‘genre’. The chapters consider historical publications, raising questions relating to evidence, reception and the status of the memorial text as historical artefact. The chapters also consider the wide variety of popular historical writing available to the reader, ranging from the first-hand accounts of events found in political diaries to historical biography. The ways in which popular historical writers are constructed by their reception is considered, looking at the case of Richard Holmes. This section argues that there are multiple ‘genres’ of history in the public cultural imagination, increasingly diverse ways that these genres are presented and serviced, and that they are constantly evolving. History in these public manifestations is incredibly dynamic, and this section begins the work of attempting to understand and partially map its complex make-up. In order to bring into focus wider questions of the status and representation of the historian, the section concludes with a consideration of their impact and significance in fiction such as films, novels and games.
Notes
1Jordanova, History in Practice, p. 155.
2J. Tosh, The Pursuit of History, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, p. 12.
3On the development of popular history over the past centuries see the essays collected in Körte and Paletschek (eds), Popular History 1800–1900–2000.
4J. Moran, ‘Cultural Studies and academic stardom’, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 1:1 (1998), 67–82. See also S. Collini, What Are Universities For?, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2012.
5See M. Nussbaum, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012; H. Smith, The Value of the Humanities, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013; Collini, Universities.
6See Taithe and Ramos Pinto (eds), The Impact of History?
7Richard J. Evans, ‘The death of the celebrity historian is much exaggerated’, the Guardian, 27 May 2012, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/may/27/death-celebrity-historians-exaggerated [accessed 29 April 2015].
8Quoted in C. Milmo, ‘Young historians are damaging academia’, the Independent, 9 May 2012, http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/history/young-historians-are-damaging-academia-in-their-bid-for-stardom-7723284.html [accessed 10 December 2014].
9See E. W. Said, ‘The public role of writers and intellectuals’, in H. Small (ed.), The Public Intellectual, London: Blackwell, 2002, pp. 19–40.
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1
THE PUBLIC HISTORIAN, THE HISTORIAN IN PUBLIC
The ‘new gardening’ and the publicity historian
Historians in the public eye are not new. A. J. P. Taylor’s set of iconic television series ran until 1984 and Robert Kee’s important Ireland – A Television History (1980) was shown around the world; Norman Stone was an advisor of Margaret Thatcher; in the 1980s E. P. Thompson had helped revitalise CND.1 However, increasingly through the later 1990s ‘history’ became part of a media culture less interested in the factual than in narratives and personalities.2 It was Simon Schama’s documentary series Simon Schama’s A History of Britain (BBC1, 2000, 2001) that provided the catalyst to push history from a standard part of television programming to being a media phenomenon, and made the historian into a public figure in an unprecedented way.3 The series gained a huge audience and provoked wide debate about nationhood and memorialisation. This was at a time when history as a subject was extremely unpopular at school and university applications went down. With the wide success – in terms of ratings and influence – of Schama’s programme and the high profile accorded to David Starkey, Tristram Hunt and Niall Ferguson, history was variously termed the ‘new rock’n’roll’, the ‘new cookery’ and the ‘new gardening’.4 The first suggests producers attempting to make the phenomenon fashionable, hip and edgy, whereas the last two descriptions signal history’s entrance into lifestyle programming and the world of leisure pursuit. Each phrase suggests the sudden and surprising prevalence of the past in the popular imagination, although in the main this means on television, and each was a reaction to the extraordinary mushrooming of documentary, reality history shows and the associated genealogy boom that shows no sign of abating. The aftershocks of these events in the early twenty-first century are still being felt, and the historian in public has become an increasingly familiar sight, and an increasingly complex trope.
These descriptions also insert history into a discourse of individualised or personality/presenter-led television, emphasised for instance by Schama’s and Starkey’s titular ownership of their histories and Ferguson’s discussion of his own family in his first considerations of empire.5 History becomes part of a discourse of leisure, not a professionalized pursuit, and those who present it are personalities and celebrities.6 As a consequence of the explosion of interest the historians involved became a hybrid combination of television personalities, media figures and cultural gatekeepers.7 They were abstracted from their disciplinary and academic origins and inserted into a set of complex and quite problematic social and cultural matrices. The contemporary public intellectual figure is part of a multifarious set of mediated cultural discourses, many of which they are not in control of.8
Simon Schama’s style, direct delivery and informal dress were calculated to undermine the standard image of a television historian. Schama made the pursuit of history sexy somehow, a combination of sharp thinking and physical exploration as much as time in the archive (libraries are rarely shown in his series). He entered the public imagination and popular culture in a way inconceivable to populist and public historians of the 1980s. A similarly celebritised historian is David Starkey, who, despite a respected career before tel...
