The Rest Is History

Chalmers in Citizens describes it as the first organ of a revolutionary police state, and essentially it takes for itself all the powers of the Ancien Rgime that everyone had condemned.

that passage actually is quoted by Simon Schama in his book Citizens.

And as Simon Schama says in his book, Citizens, this isn't the end of something.

She does. So Simon Schama in Citizen says, the more outrageous the denunciations of the established order, the better the queen liked it.

Simon Schama's book Citizens. Is insanely enjoyable. I know it's always tempting to be revisionist and to say of a great historian and a great book, ah, it's actually rubbish. It is tip top. It is brilliant. And has great pictures as well.

One historian we've mentioned, I think once or twice, Fernando Cervantes who wrote a book called Conquistadores. He says, you will not understand anything that happens if you think the Spanish are just greedy and violent.

There's a wonderful book called Conquistadores by Fernando Cervantes, who's a Mexican historian.

the book Conquistadores by Fernando Cervantes, who's a Mexican historian based in Britain, takes the Spanish religiosity really seriously and discusses how it shaped their actions in the New World.

I read a book a year ago by a guy called Fernando Cervantes ... it's a book called Conquistadores and it's a book about what happens in the same year so basically the arrival of the Spanish in the new world.

One of the things that Cervantes really brings out in this book is he says we traditionally see the Spanish arrival in the new world as motivated purely by plunder and greed and cynicism, and that Christianity is merely a fig leaf.

He argues that the Christian motive was not a fig leaf at all; the conquistadors genuinely believed they were saving souls, and that their conversion efforts were rooted in sincere religious conviction.

I was always very sceptical as you know. I've dished them a little bit in my book, The Great British Dream Factory.

As the author of The Great British Dream Factory, The Strange History of Our National Imagination, a book that looks at the impact of British culture on the imagination of the world, how would you rate the impact of J.K. Rowling?

And I wrote a tiein book for that called The Great British Dream Factory. Which I'm holding up now as I talk to you, Dominic.

Your fine book The Great British Dream Factory, The Strange History of Our National Imagination, a fabulous chapter on it.

and in his book, Rivers of Gold, which is part of his mighty trilogy about the foundation of the Spanish empire, the historian Hugh Thomas, Lord Thomas has the extraordinary phrase, this was the first account of lovemaking in the new world.

The fascinating thing, I think it's Hugh Thomas who mentions this in Rivers of Gold.

I think it's Hugh Thomas in one of his books, Rivers of Gold, I think says, you can basically imagine the scene of Columbus getting out these tattered documents that he's been exhibiting around Europe.

I think it's Hugh Thomas in one of his books, Rivers of Gold, I think says, you can basically imagine the scene of Columbus getting out these tattered documents that he's been exhibiting around Europe.

It's quoted by Mark Gregory Peck in his book, A Most Holy War, which is a brilliant account of the subject of today's episode, Dominic.

And Pegg in his book describes this as an absolutely fateful moment that it's the merging, he says, of a century or more of Latin Christian thought on heresy and holy war.

So Pagan in A Most Holy War has, I mean, the orb slowly darkened as rivulets of gore spilled down the streets and washed off the bridge.

Peg... begins his book, A Most Holy War, with this incredible description of one of the first ghosts to appear from purgatory.

Mark Gregory Pegg in A Most Holy War, The Albigensian Crusade and the Battle for Christendom, the story of the Cathars.

Mark Gregory Pegg in A Most Holy War, The Albigensian Crusade and the Battle for Christendom

It's a book called A Most Holy War, The Albigensian Crusade and the Battle for Christendom by a scholar called Mark Gregory Pegg. It's a fantastic book, absolutely thrilling work of history.

He also took War and Peace and read that.

Stendhal's Le Rouge et le Noir, Tolstoy War and Peace.

when Alexander the Tsar of Russia and Napoleon meet on a barge and plan to invade India together in 1810. 1812 is the retreat. So 1889, 1812, War and Peace opens with before Tilsit. That's book one of War and Peace.

Neville Coghill did, who was the great scholar who translated it for the Penguin classics, which I originally gave you to read, but you said, no, full in, let's go for the middle English.

There will be more poetry in our next episode, which will be on Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales, which was written in Richard II's reign, and will be the final part of our four-part swing through the rule of Richard II.

I began reading Canterbury Tales and it struck me completely afresh the excitement of it because Chaucer is writing at a time where the plague is endemic in London.

We'll be doing Margaret Atwood's book, The Handmaid's Tale.

J.R. Tolkien's fantasy classic The Hobbit to Bram Stoker's horror novel Dracula to Margaret Atwood's dystopian fable The Handmaid's Tale.

So we did The Hobbit and In Cold Blood and The Handmaid's Ted and so on and so forth.

The most famous product of this is Frankenstein, which is a novel that in which the weather gets progressively worse and worse and worse.

I'd urge anyone who hasn't read it to read it because it's fantastic.

We will be looking at thrilling Gothic bodice rippers like Wuthering Heights and Frankenstein, as well as iconic stories like The Great Gatsby or Little Women, and then also some more modern stuff.

We will be looking at thrilling Gothic bodice rippers like Wuthering Heights and Frankenstein, as well as iconic stories like The Great Gatsby or Little Women.

Charles Dickens used this house where we're sitting right now as the inspiration for Satis House which is of course Miss Havisham's house in his novel Great Expectations.

Charles Dickens used this house where we're sitting right now as the inspiration for Satis House which is of course Miss Havisham's house in his novel Great Expectations.

Great Expectations is very close to my heart Tom because I won the school public speaking and reading competition four years in a row with the opening of Great Expectations.

and one of them is Pip in Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, who when he comes to London goes to the offices of Mr Jaggers...

from our anglo-saxon but even going further back than that so you know Milton rights Paradise Lost the idea of freedoms

Milton really ... Paradise Lost his great poem ...

he also has a starring role in Paradise Lost. Horrid king besmeared with the blood of human sacrifice and parents tears. Milton's not messing around is he?

So that was the Tudor number one bestseller, the thrillingly titled Acts and Monuments of These Latter and Perilous Days, Touching Matters of the Church. And it was by an unusually forensic and judicious historian, John Fox, a man of Lincolnshire, hence the accent.

Fox's Book of Martyrs, as its name suggests, there are lots of people who will be prepared to go to the stake.

Fox's Book of Martyrs ... the great tyranny of Bloody Mary's reign.

the great theme of fox's book of martyrs this sense that the revival of catholicism would mean protestants being burnt in smithfield...

There's this sense of Fox's Book of Martyrs, which is this huge saga of sort of Protestant martyrs being killed by evil Catholics.

He's like the judge in Blood Meridian.

the theme of kind of a terrible ending of Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy's great novel.

the war against Mexico which is incredibly brutal that's the backdrop for Cormac McCarthy's great novel Blood Meridian which is you know a terrifying portrayal of yeah we talked about that

These experiences led him to write his most famous novels Animal Farm and 1984 giving us enduring phrases like Big Brother is watching you.

These experiences led him to write his most famous novels Animal Farm and 1984 giving us enduring phrases like Big Brother is watching you.

Well with Animal Farm, they are two of the defining books of the 20th century.

He thought of Animal Farm when he was in Wellington and he saw a little boy whacking a shire horse... the book was a warning about revolutions in general rather than just the Soviet Union.

It was a massive success with the exception of Robinson Crusoe. It was by far his bestselling book.

It was a massive success with the exception of Robinson Crusoe. It was by far his best-selling book.

he was inspired to go to sea by reading Robinson Crusoe.

It's Latin America ... it's this dream of, it's kind of something from Les Misrables or something.

It's like a scene from Les Miserables, Tom.

my daughter's favourite film was Marie Antoinette but they then moved on to another film which was of course Les Miserables ... the portrayal of the revolution then Les Miserables but the thing about it is it's a very minor revolution ...

the famous uh slogan that sums it up uh is the end of history written by francis fukey armor

I had to go and interview Francis Fukuyama, author of The End of History.

his whole thesis is that the end of history means that England has won.

So you could tell quite a bleak story about the 90s and you could also tell us I mean that going back to the hubris point you could argue that a defining book of the 90s in some ways is Francis Fukuyama's The End of History

So for instance Wuthering Heights, and then something maybe newer and a bit more contemporary. So The Secret History by Donna Tartt or Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.

So we start with, of course, Wuthering Heights, the truth behind this iconic, famously kind of overwrought story and obviously reflecting a little bit on the new movie.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, published in 1847. It's set in 1801, but it's looking back even before that. And Tabby, it's one of the absolute canonical classics. And it's actually regarded, isn't it, as one of the great romantic novels.

I thought, oh, disappointing. It's not as good as Jane Eyre. Because I didn't really get into the kind of fever dream side of things. I frankly did get a little bit lost. And I thought to myself, this is going to be very self-incriminating. I thought to myself, this is a bit of a book for teenage girls.

And you might say, well, where does this come from in this sort of quite withdrawn, lonely, you know, very bookish girl? And an answer is she herself is quite violent.

We will be looking at thrilling Gothic bodice rippers like Wuthering Heights and Frankenstein, as well as iconic stories like The Great Gatsby or Little Women, and then also some more modern stuff.

We will be looking at thrilling Gothic bodice rippers like Wuthering Heights and Frankenstein, as well as iconic stories like The Great Gatsby or Little Women.

He's the author of the nonfiction book that inspired the hit TV drama Say Nothing.

And our guest on the miniseries is Patrick Radden Keefe. Now, he's the author of the nonfiction book that inspired the hit TV drama Say Nothing.

Now, he's the author of the nonfiction book that inspired the hit TV drama, Say Nothing. It's one of my favourite books. It's, I think, the kind of in cold blood for our generation. Extraordinary work of nonfiction.

And then the final candidate, which Adam Hochschild mentions in his book, King Leopold's Ghost, is a guy called Leon Rom.

And Adam Hochschild in his brilliant book, King Leopold's Ghost, that we've mentioned quite a lot, he says, Someone feted for life as a small town bank clerk or a plumber in Europe could instead become a warlord, an ivory merchant, a big game hunter and a possessor of a harem.

So in the book King Leopold's Ghost, there are long narratives of kind of these hideous, bloody mutiners where forced public units have turned against their officers.

There's a brilliant book on this called King Leopold's Ghost by the American writer Adam Hochschild. We'll be borrowing from that book very liberally.

Not an uncontroversial book itself. And in next week's bonus episode, we'll talk about some of the arguments about that book.

There's a brilliant example in the book, King Leopold's Ghost, a terrifying example.