History can be too fast in the making

12 April 2012

How long, I wonder, until the David Laws affair gets turned into a three-part BBC historical drama?

A promising Chief Secretary (played by a fasting Sean Bean, perhaps?) earns the admiration of new coalition partners Cameron and Clegg (Hugh Grant and James Wilby) before his promising career is cut short by a melancholy scandal.

The final shot sees Chancellor George Osborne (David Walliams? Rowan Atkinson?) eyeing his new colleague Danny Alexander (Beaker from the Muppets) suspiciously. Coldplay's Viva La Vida strikes up. Credits roll.

Rest assured: somewhere, someone is writing the script. David Hare, I expect, if not Peter Morgan. For the rolling news has become the primary source of historical drama, history itself the study of five minutes ago.

The historian Antony Beevor has been bemoaning this trend at the Hay Festival. History is now written "on the hoof", grumbled the author of Stalingrad.

Journalists, hoping to be first to the definitive take, try to cast events in the light of posterity even as they are happening.

This "spoils the ground" for the future historian, as the version of events decided on by whoever gets the first book deal becomes the accepted account, soon to be enshrined in the public mind by some hastily written TV special.

For these reasons, Beevor said he "would not touch Iraq with a bargepole" - which does make me wonder how that option would ever be set before him:

Publisher: Mr Beevor, would you like to touch Iraq?

Beevor: No, thanks.

Publisher: Not even with this bargepole? (Produces bargepole).

Beevor: No!

He is wise to insist, for the sensible commentator takes the long view. Recently, I got talking to a historian who is writing an account of the Cuban Missile Crisis. She found little value in the biographies of John F Kennedy that were published shortly after his assassination, whose authors attempted to canonise the president rather than offer their first-hand insights.

Many accounts of the recent past have fallen into this same trap of lending too much weight to the prevailing mood. Do the eulogies of New Labour penned now amount to more than high-end gossip? Will dramas such as The Queen offer insights for future historians? Only, I suspect, in as far as they tell a truth about the narcissism of our age.

You could date the trend back to the pandemic of nostalgia that greeted the Millennium, when the opportunity to reflect on 1,000 years of human achievement was generally passed up in favour of reflecting on the past 30 or so years of ephemera - often in the form of Mel and Sue tittering about space hoppers. While history should be an exercise in visiting the foreign country of the past, seeing what they do differently there, we now use it to see what we recognise of ourselves, what we dimly remember.

A wiser analysis is that offered by the Chinese communist Zhou Enlai of the French Revolution. What was its impact, he was asked? "It's too soon to say," was his response.

England, no place for children

Poor little Theo Walcott. The diminutive winger's selection for Sven-Göran Eriksson's 2006 World Cup squad, before he had even made his Premier League debut for Arsenal, was a travesty.

His omission for this year's tournament in South Africa is a more measured decision, as you'd expect from Fabio Capello — but it must still be heartbreaking for the little guy.

Another of Don Fabio's omissions brings a sigh of relief. Rumour has it that Leighton Baines, the Everton left-back, was dropped because he confessed to being prone to homesickness.

I can't imagine being stuck with John Terry et
al for weeks on end is a wall-to-wall chucklefest. But you'd hope the prospect of playing in the most exciting tournament on earth would have its consolations, poor child.

The first true triumph for older women

Should you wish to be dazzled by a display of feminine wit and wiles, ignore Sex and the City 2 - a Jimmy Choo stamping on a human face for ever, to adapt George Orwell's vision of the future. Go instead to see Women Beware Women at the National Theatre. It's a right rip-snorter.

Written circa 1621 by Thomas Middleton, a master of sexual psychology, it's the filthiest thing on the London stage. Very stylish too, in Marianne Elliott's production. Despite the fact that women get raped, ravished and murdered all over the shop, somehow it feels like it amounts to a female victory.

Harriet Walter's magnificent old schemer is a particular delight -proof that inspiring roles for ageing women did not begin, as some mystifyingly maintain, with Carrie Bradshaw.

I can't handle this gizmo

Are you going to get an iPad, I keep being asked?
I think not. I'm sure they are very comely and all that, but at the risk of being hopelessly prosaic, £499 is just a lot of moolah.

Apparently this is quite a reasonable sum for a machine that can, like the gadget described by Tom Waits in Step Right Up, get rid of gambling debts, remove unwanted lipstick from your collar, find the slipper at large under the chaise longue, turn a sandwich into a banquet etc.

Global sales have just broken the two million mark — making it a faster seller even than the iPhone, that callous destroyer of the pub quiz. But it should be remembered that being a Luddite is, for most, a decision enforced by circumstance. Such a gizmo is an expensive novelty, not a human right.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in