I think my liking grew as I grew, and grown now, just over the forty hill, and having read more about the world and the peoples of the world, I have come to realise (and appreciate) how important those first building blocks were.
1066 The Battle of Hastings. 1666 The Great Fire of London. The Egyptians with its project on how pyramids were built and bodies preserved; and how I still regret, even now, that we hadn't studied the Vikings. Henry VIII and a rhyme to remember the names and fates of his six wives. Elizabeth I and the Spanish Armada, although I can't remember whether this was school or a bit of history I suddenly inexplicably took an interest in; I know it led to a large beautiful illustrated book of Kings and Queens. And of course The Gunpowder Plot. What child doesn't learn, and enjoy learning, about Guy Fawkes!
Modern warfare came a little later. The Blitz. Air raids and shelters and tube stations. With BBC educational dramas – that's how we broached the subject of sex too: the boys disgusted and the girls horrified at the sight of a woman giving birth. History right there in the making.
The grittier facts of history came a little later, when we'd all gone our separate ways to whatever secondary school had decided to take us, where history, I soon discovered, was less integrative fun and more data, none of it that easy to remember, but with detail came a more rounded feel as different perspectives were explored.
I don't recall much prior to GCSE, but I know we did the Romans, for I distinctly remember in class discussing a chapter on Roman baths.
I was always going to choose it over geography. And I'm still glad I did, although it did become more about dates, statistics and policies, which I've never had much of a head for, because what interests me is the influence of events on people. But I did okay. A 'C' in my view was respectable – in the late 90s Cs were respected more.
And it has left its own legacy, its own stain on my character, for out of all my subject lessons, those of History have stayed with me the longest and given me, weirdly, a fondness for particular events and eras. Most notably 1930s America: The Wall Street Crash, The Great Depression, the severe dust storms and drought conditions in the Dust Bowl region, The New Deal. Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. The jazz clubs, prohibition and bootlegging.
I still wonder why we concentrated on it as much as we did? It was in the curriculum; yes, but we're weren't American. It formed the world view, that was it. Bled in to what was happening with the rest of the world. Cause and effect. America had their struggles and in Europe Hitler was on the rise, striking terror into the breasts of Jews.
All countries have their hardships: economic slumps, revolutions, military dictatorships and constitutional monarchies, and history allows you to study these, in the aftermath, from all conceivable angles: what, who, where, why etc. With hindsight, so much can be seen, so much explored, and not just factually but fictionally, too.
And I do like to explore fictional interpretations, imaginings of history. Two historical figures brought together; a deeper layer revealed to a factual relationship; a different meaning given to an event that happened etc., because then it leads me to want to know more, if I knew very little before, of the actual people, the actual event that inspired the novel. In doing that though, I'm well aware that my enjoyment of the novel might be shot to pieces, for the plot or the meeting of two individuals might then seem too fanciful, too loosely based on facts. There's a line and that line is extremely fine.
That, for me, is the real problem with liking history: that line, though a different line this time, between moral decency and ambiguity, which is equally as hard to define in a few words as to explain in more, since history, both retrogressively and progressively, is like gossip: it guiltily excites and morbidly fascinates.
Picture credit: Clio, Muse of History, 1634, Johannes Moreelse (source: WikiArt).
Written February 2020.
