On podcasts & history
Podcasts are all the rage now and seem to conform with the addiction to mobile phones. A friend of mine likened them to being caught by bores in the pub.
The format is generally a duet who either agree with one another sycophantically or indeed disagree from different viewpoints.
The dominant podcast production company is Gary Lineker’s Goalhanger Productions and ‘The Rest Is…”
Dominic Sandbrook and fellow historian Tom Holland were the market leaders and alleged to receive salaries of £1 million each.
They personally endorse sponsors and ceaselessly promote themselves, their books, their events and their series.
‘The Rest is Politics’ features Alistair Campbell and Rory Stewart.
My late father described Campbell as the most loathsome man in public politics these last 50 years: a know-all, serial name dropper, whose self-confidence covers a deeper insecurity and depression, he pairs up with a flaky failure of a Tory politician.
David McCloskey and Gordon Carrera present ‘The Rest Is Classified‘.
McCloskey, who is ex-CIA, has now written 8 immemorable spy novels whilst Carrera is a BBC apparatchik.
This is not to criticise the output of podcasts which is often varied and engrossing.
This week’s ‘The Rest is History‘ featured the Elizabethan astrologer and alchemist John Dee.
It’s easy to dismiss his teachings as ‘hocus pocus’ but, in Tudor times, alchemy and astrology were serious sciences.
Indeed, more recently, Nancy Reagan and Princess Diana were said to consult astrologers. Yet there is so much self-serving promotion by these presenters that they now lack credibility.
Historians are now centre stage. Andrew Roberts, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Anthony Beevor, Peter Frankopan and James Holland enjoy a popularity which hitherto no historian has enjoyed.
Works are often spun out.
James Holland wrote a decent account of the 1943 Italian campaign. I was initially curious as to why he had centred on 1943 when 1944 featured Anzio, Monte Cassino and the German invasion in the north, but the answer came with the publication of a second book.
Generally the study of History is to be encouraged. If it had been part of the PPE Oxford Tripos then successive Tory leaders might have a better understanding of the world.
There are clear comparisons between Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler.
Both majored on ‘making their country great again’, depriving a weaker country of its wealth and resources , palling up to dictators and bullying in negotiations.
