revolution_fr | Post-script: 'historians' and 'truth.'

A post-script to my previous post - some of you might like this - it's from the last U.S. election night coverage on the BBC - it's the wee small hours of the morning (Obama's big victory speech was on at 5am here) and methinks someone has been enjoying the BBC's 'hospitality' room a bit...but I love Dimbleby's little comment right at the end here...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3v-wmqc27U&feature=related and there' this, too... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCQrnSQ4rTo&feature=SeriesPlayList&p=D638E3BA48901241&index=21 (that should be the Dead Ringers / Simon Schama's fee sketch: the woman who is now head of BBC2 factual programming - and salaries - thinks the man is a towering genius whose book 'Citizens' changed her life. Blimey. Explains a lot about BBC history programmes, though: the pro-English Revolution 1640's set drama the Devil's Whore was dropped by the BBC (I'm guessing when they realised Charles 1 wasn't going to be the 'hero') and made instead by the independent Channel4).

P.P.S. For a taste of BBC things to come, the entire episode of Schama's last televisual rant against the French Revolution has been posted on Youtube. Dig the spotty teenage Robespierre, and the even spottier Danton (who looks like a wino), scabby Marat, not to mention the hideously deformed David himself - the old 'French Revolution as Zoo' approach....it's not pleasant, but anyone out there who wants more stuff for essays etc. on right-wing/revisionist/reactionary/pop cultural 'takes' on the revolution can use this as a good example of the genre. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDi6jyifhY4

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I don't know what possessed me but I watched the first section. I had to stop though; there were too many completely untenable assertions. (I see it now; David's soul was irrevocably damaged as a child, leaving him to be "painfully earnest" in his desire to do evil things like painting the evil Marat. Who knew?)

I think this is typical of Schama's failure to grasp (or convenient/lazy refusal to be bothered with) the big picture: this was an era of high mortality and when something like 70% of the population had smallpox at some point in their life (hence the layers of make-up evident in every portrait from the Tudor period until Jenner's Smallpox innoculation was invented - i'd have thought someone who reckons he's an 'art historian' might have noticed that in the course of his 'work'), but he thinks not having post-plastic-surgery-Hollywood standards of physical 'perfection' would be abnormal and single you out and traumatise you - David as The Elephant Man. Ditto stuff like dead siblings, dead parents and so on (though - again, typical Schama - in 'Citizens' he seems to be the only historian not to mention Robespierre's parents - and that's one of the cases where I do think this fact had a bearing on the subject's life. I presume he feared that mentioning that he was an orphan might make his readers think 'aww, poor kid!' and he couldn't have that! Oh, here it is, p 577, US edition, Schama's sole mention of the powdered monster's childhood: "these lessons in moral earnestness he learned from his lawyer father" - which is, to put it mildly, a 'take' on Robespierre's father unique amongst historians! A page letter he says the letter from Saint-Just was sent in August 1789 (that's quick work)and then goes on to describe Robespierre's 'long nose', which may fit in with Schama's general portrayal of him as slinking around like the Child-Catcher, but no relationship to reality whatsoever...

What I find utterly extraordinary is that Schama apparently lectured on the French Revolution at Brasenose: it's not an Oxford college with a great academic reputation, but he can't even get basic, basic facts right! Dates, for christ's sake! And in a period where events are as concentrated as this, when weeks are like years, to get something as simple as dates wrong is like saying the Romans came to Britain on Concorde. It's not just Schama's politics that I loathe, the way he lathers every noun with a dozen negative adjectives, the way he sneers about people whose bravery and achievements he could never come close to, the way he says 'objectivity' isn't his job - it's his total inability to write basic facts. I've just read an interview with him where he calls Michelet 'Michelin' throughout...jesus wept!

I've just read an interview with him where he calls Michelet 'Michelin' throughout...jesus wept!

I loled. I would find it more amusing if I didn't believe you, though.

I've only read bits of Citizens - in particular (what else?) looking at how he treated the Desmoulins - and couldn't help noticing that he gives Camille two different ages at different points in the book. And both of them are wrong.

Here's the interview - 'Citizens' is discussed halfway-and-a-bit down the page. It confirms what I'd heard and long suspected - that it was written as a speedy commission, to cash in on the bicentennary, and not born out of any burning desire on Schama's part to write about the period (David Starkey, another right-wing, highly paid TV historian, is absolutely steeped in and adores 'his' period). Even more bizarre, he says (for his 'research') he didn't just want to read books writen in the last 10 years (!!),but had the amazing idea of reading stuff written in 19thc histories, too (!!!!!!). And there was I, thinking a historian's first point of research would be primary documents from the archives, letters and memoirs...http://www.barnesandnoble.com/bn-review/note.asp?note=22343680

Post-script: 'historians' and 'truth.'

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