Simon T. Kaye

The five-part BBC documentary, closely associated with the similarly themed, titled and authored book, ended last night. And, by all that is holy, it’s the first documentary in some years not mainly involving whales that I’ve felt driven to watch every last minute of.

In attempting to tackle a broad-brush history of the years since the war in a primarily political way, the most obvious comparison is with fellow ex-journo Peter Hennessy’s The Prime Minister: The Office and Its Holders Since 1945, a slightly older book. The bearing is similar, even if Marr’s work is more ostensibly a popular history than Hennessy’s. Even the political alignment is identically portrayed (in that it is hardly portrayed at all- good to see), both histories littered with semi-personal anecdotes (Hennessy’s constant references to events that simply must have been disclosed to him in some shady curry-house just off parliament square, tie still loose from the struggles of the lobby; Marr’s mentioning last night of his own immediate- and flawed- reaction to the swift “victory” in Iraq).

But Marr’s vision is clearer, if more vague; his hypothesis more interesting, and his presentation more charismatic. Based upon the documentary along, Andrew Marr’s is the better history.

I like Andrew Marr. I think many people do. He has a gift for images, for easily relatable metaphors which somehow always stop short of being patronising- comparing the British-Scottish union to a pizza being pulled apart, but still connected by molten cheese, or describing the heady, commercial ‘loadsamoney!’ days of the 80s as ‘like being properly drunk for the first time’.

And of course, Marr has a pretty interesting perspective on the last fifty years or so. He has served as a newsroom hack, a lobby correspondent, the editor of a broadsheet (back when the Independent was a broadsheet), the BBC’s political editor, and now a roving, quasi-historian with a penchant for accessibly intellectual radio and television programming and friendly interviews with VIPS on sunday mornings. His Scottish origins and very English current existence come into play as well; with the Scottish Nationalists in power and talk of a referendum on Union membership, Andrew Marr speaks of cheese stretched between two slices of pizza with a degree of personal certainty. Andrew Marr, you see, is the Mozzarella.

This documentary was also an attempt at mythologisation; at crafting a popular, unitary narrative from the thousands of strands of an increasingly complex national history. Marr sticks his fingers into all sorts of pies, discussing the fortunes of British cinema as if it has a real, causal bearing on the flow of the story of the British People. And usually- usually- he pulls it off.

There is the feeling that Andrew Marr desperately wants to understand the changes this country’s been through for himself; the way that the economy was changed, the opening of the gates to globalisation, even the threat of the greenhouse effect. This is a journalist’s personal attempt to come up with some sort of unified field theory for his own recent history.

The transition from career journalist to historian is frequently attempted, if commonly failed. Someone once wrote that the newspapers are the first draft of history; to Marr, as to so many others, it must seem the most natural thing in the world to have a crack at the second draft, as well. Or even the third. Marr chose wisely in writing first about himself, and then the history of his own profession in My Trade, which is excellent reading for anyone.

Complaints? The series was too short. Covering six decades of history in a total of five hours is a tall order for anyone. That’s about one year of history for every five minutes of screen-time; clearly inadequate. The problem with this approach is that the emphasis has to become about what is ommitted rather than what is included. For example, the last programme was full of implicit criticism of Blair’s foreign record, but it never once mentioned Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, or Bosnia. Picking the quote that matches the story is a journalistic, rather than historical, practice.

Nevertheless, this was some of the most compelling documentary work that I’ve seen for some time. Not enough is done to catalogue the years following World War 2- especially given the hours upon hours of documentaries devoted to that conflict. Andrew Marr’s excellent new series was a good first step in addressing this deficiency.