Screen histories seeing the past: Simon Schama's 'a history of Britain' and public history

History Workshop Journal

Volumn 56, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 153-174

  Champion, Justin ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33750136487     PISSN: 13633554     EISSN: 14774569     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/hwj/56.1.153     Document Type: Article

References (40)

1. George Macauley Trevelyan, in Clio, a Muse, London, 1903.
2. I am grateful to my colleague Dr Sam Barnish for offering this phrase.
3. Robert A. Rosenstone, 'History in Images/History in Words: Reflections on the Possibility of Really Putting History into Film', American Historical Review 93, 1988, p. 1, 173.
4. See T. Stearn 'What's Wrong with Television History?', History Today, December 2002, pp. 26-7.
5. See the websites at http://jefferson. village.virginia.edu/rossetti/and http://www.newtonproject.ic.ac.uk/.
6. For a more general overview of other developments see, http://www.iath.virginia.edu/researchEssays.html.
7. See Anthony Grafton The Footnote: a Curious History, London, 1997.
8. See Hayden White Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism, Baltimore, 1978.
9. See Guy Stanton Ford, 'A Ranke Letter', Journal of Modern History 32, 1960, pp. 142-4.
10. See V. Hislop, 'Fury of a Horrible Historian', Telegraph, 19 October, 2002.
11. Arthur Marwick, The New Nature of History, London, 2001, p. 232.
12. Simon Schama, Dead Certainties: Unwarranted Speculations, London 2001.
13. For the details of the production and episode, see the innovative associated website at http://www.spypondproductions.com/parkman/index.htm.
14. See the online version of the lecture, at The World Congress of History Producers 2001, http://history2001.com/index.html. Citations from Schama are from this electronic version unless otherwise stated.
15. See Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, New Haven, 1992, pp. 37-40.
16. The source for this is David Dymond and Clive Paine, The Spoil of Long Melford Church: the Reformation in a Suffolk Parish, Suffolk 1992.
17. 'David Frost interview with Simon Schama and Eric Hobsbawm', BBC Breakfast with Frost, 26 May 2002.
18. John Willis, 'Past is Perfect', Guardian, 29 October 2001.
19. See 'The making of "A History of Britain"', http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/hob/making-of-01.shtml.
20. 'Historical Truth: an Interview with Ken Burns', American Historical Review 100, 1995, pp. 741-64.
21. See also Robert Brent Toplin, 'The Filmmaker as Historian', American Historical Review 93, 1988, pp. 1, 210-27.
22. 'Interview with Ken Burns', pp. 742 and 757.
23. 'Interview with Ken Burns', pp. 760-1.
24. James Chapman 'The World at War: Television, Documentary, History', in The Historian, Television and Television History, ed. Graham Roberts and Philip M. Taylor, Luton, 2001, p. 127.
25. Chapman, 'The World at War ', p. 135.
26. Marwick, The New Nature of History, p. 236.
27. Others, in a more subtle way, have argued that the programme was overly conservative as a piece of TV: see F. Fernandez Armesto, 'How TV's History Men get it Wrong', Evening Standard, 22 April 2002.
28. Observer, 16 June 2002.
29. For an overview of this see Stuart Jeffries, 'Once More with Feeling', Guardian, 28 October 2002.
30. History and Theory devoted a special issue to the theme of 'Producing the Past: Making Histories Inside and Outside the Academy': vol. 36, 1997.
31. See also Robert Rosenstone's 'Does a Filmic Writing of History Exist?', History and Theory 41, 2002, pp. 134-44.
32. Natalie Zemon Davis has engaged with the issue in Slaves on Screen, Toronto, 2000.
33. For a discussion of Davis's involvement in the film about Martin Guerre see the very useful website of Sharon Howard, 'Early Modernity on Film' (http://www.earlymodernweb.org.uk/film/emfilm.htm).
34. See also Robert Finlay, 'The Refashioning of Martin Guerre', American Historical Review 93, 1988, pp. 553-71.
35. See http://www.albany.edu/history/hist-fict/home.htm for a discussion of historical fiction.
36. William Boyd, Nate Tate. An American Artist: 1928-1960, London, 1998, p. 11.
37. Christopher Tayler, 'A Bit of a Lush', London Review of Books, 23 May 2002:
38. see http://www.lrb.co.uk/v24/n10/tayl01-.html.
39. Timothy Garton Ash, 'Truth is Another Country', Guardian Review, 16 November 2002, pp. 4-6.
40. Ian Bremner, 'History without Archives: Simon Schama's A History of Britain in The Historian, Television and Television History, ed. Roberts and Taylor, pp. 63-75.