0:00:18.015,0:00:19.805 Hello, my topic for you today is: 0:00:19.805,0:00:22.151 Is the past a foreign country? 0:00:22.151,0:00:26.037 That is of course the first line[br]of L.P. Hartley's book "The Go-Between": 0:00:26.037,0:00:29.360 "The past is a foreign country,[br]they do things differently there." 0:00:29.360,0:00:32.534 My question for you today is: "Is it?" 0:00:32.694,0:00:36.253 If it is, why does popular culture[br]always present the past 0:00:36.253,0:00:40.498 to something so cosy[br]and actually not alien at all? 0:00:40.508,0:00:43.710 If it is, finally, do can we go there? 0:00:43.710,0:00:44.965 Do we have a visa? 0:00:44.965,0:00:47.935 Do we have the passport that we need? 0:00:47.935,0:00:51.233 Historians might actually go further,[br]say that it's a foreign country, 0:00:51.233,0:00:55.586 that it's actually an imaginary country,[br]that is more Narnia than France, 0:00:55.586,0:00:59.105 because of course the extraordinary thing[br]about the past is, that it was, 0:00:59.949,0:01:01.205 and it is not. 0:01:01.205,0:01:04.809 History is the study[br]of something that doesn't exist, 0:01:04.809,0:01:08.020 and sometimes it feels like[br]the veil between us and the past 0:01:08.020,0:01:10.150 is therefore great. 0:01:10.150,0:01:13.058 Thankfully there are footprints[br]in the snow for us to follow, 0:01:13.058,0:01:14.797 should we choose to go. 0:01:15.658,0:01:18.625 History in the popular media[br]tends to be something 0:01:18.625,0:01:22.178 that stresses the similarities[br]between us and them, 0:01:22.178,0:01:27.054 so that they were people who ate,[br]people who slept, people who fell in love, 0:01:27.054,0:01:32.385 who, you know, needed to wash,[br]who hoped, believed, dreamed and died, 0:01:32.385,0:01:34.025 just as we would do. 0:01:34.025,0:01:35.930 In fact, G.M. Trevelyan said: 0:01:35.930,0:01:39.197 "The poetry of history[br]is the quasi-miraculous fact, 0:01:40.066,0:01:43.647 that once on this earth,[br]on this familiar spot of ground, 0:01:43.647,0:01:46.319 walked other people,[br]other men and women, 0:01:46.319,0:01:48.709 as actual as we are today, 0:01:48.709,0:01:51.980 thinking their own thoughts,[br]swayed by their own passions, 0:01:51.980,0:01:54.240 but now all gone, 0:01:54.240,0:01:56.764 one generation vanishing after another, 0:01:56.764,0:01:59.646 gone as utterly as we ourselves[br]are shortly be gone, 0:01:59.646,0:02:01.800 like ghost at cock-crow." 0:02:02.625,0:02:05.957 When you get to come across history[br]in the popular media, 0:02:05.957,0:02:09.434 you tend to come across stories[br]that tell you things that you know. 0:02:09.434,0:02:13.447 The great disaster of Titanic[br]is portrayed as a love story. 0:02:13.457,0:02:18.077 The Other Boleyn Girl which has Eric Bana,[br]Scarlett Johansson, Natalie Portman, 0:02:18.077,0:02:22.328 re-immagines Tudor History[br]as chick-lit sibling rivalry. 0:02:22.991,0:02:28.750 Fahrd takes arguably a treasonous criminal[br]and makes him into a freedom fighter. 0:02:28.750,0:02:32.897 A film like The Duchess, which is[br]the story of an 18th century aristocrat, 0:02:32.907,0:02:34.117 had the strap line: 0:02:34.117,0:02:36.179 "There were three in their marriage." 0:02:36.179,0:02:39.972 It came out just a year[br]after the death of Princess Diana. 0:02:39.972,0:02:43.605 Often actually what we hear about[br]is a story of shared emotions 0:02:43.605,0:02:44.665 with the past. 0:02:44.665,0:02:46.966 I used to work at Hampton Court Palace, 0:02:46.966,0:02:50.666 as part of an exhibition there[br]on Katherine of Aragon, Henry the Eighth 0:02:50.666,0:02:51.900 and Cardinal Wolsey. 0:02:51.900,0:02:52.955 There is a doorway 0:02:52.955,0:02:58.955 which has inscriptions of all the children[br]who died soon after birth, 0:02:59.455,0:03:03.651 or were still births, or miscarriages[br]of Katherine of Aragon. 0:03:03.651,0:03:06.622 One academic we worked with[br]said he had always known that, 0:03:06.622,0:03:08.932 but it was only when he saw it[br]on this doorway, 0:03:08.932,0:03:10.792 which looks a little bit like a tomb, 0:03:10.792,0:03:14.646 that he really felt it,[br]he felt that connection to the past. 0:03:14.646,0:03:19.150 This is history as sympathy,[br]this is creating connections. 0:03:19.985,0:03:21.235 Perhaps we stress this, 0:03:21.235,0:03:23.999 because if we feel that we can[br]learn lessons from the past, 0:03:23.999,0:03:28.034 we have to assume that there is[br]something meaningful in those lessons. 0:03:28.034,0:03:32.343 There can only be something meaningful,[br]if we are essentially like them. 0:03:32.343,0:03:36.709 "History doesn't repeat itself,[br]but it rhymes," said Mark Twain. 0:03:36.709,0:03:41.891 Dan Snow came to talk to my students[br]at the New College of Humanities and said, 0:03:42.313,0:03:46.472 "The past doesn't repeat itself,[br]but its the best guide we've got." 0:03:46.472,0:03:50.615 Perhaps ask why we stress[br]the familiarity with the past. 0:03:50.615,0:03:55.756 Our interest in the past is because[br]we are really interested in ourselves. 0:03:55.756,0:03:57.217 I'm going to put it like this: 0:03:57.217,0:04:00.303 History ought never to be[br]confused with nostalgia. 0:04:00.303,0:04:02.623 It is written not to revere the dead, 0:04:02.623,0:04:04.515 but to inspire the living. 0:04:04.515,0:04:08.385 It's our cultural blood stream,[br]the secret of who we are. 0:04:08.385,0:04:09.345 Perhaps that's why 0:04:09.345,0:04:11.870 "Who do you think you are?"[br]is such a popular program. 0:04:11.870,0:04:14.153 This is all about our story. 0:04:14.153,0:04:16.613 If we do look[br]at the differences in the past, 0:04:16.613,0:04:20.187 the differences we tend to look at[br]are external, superficial ones. 0:04:20.187,0:04:24.609 So if you look at reality TV programs[br]you know, 1900's House, 1940's House, 0:04:24.609,0:04:27.267 they point to things[br]like they don't have electricity, 0:04:27.267,0:04:28.837 or they have different clothes, 0:04:28.837,0:04:31.528 or they wash with lye[br]rather than shower gel. 0:04:31.528,0:04:34.239 This is the past,[br]there's hardship and privation. 0:04:34.959,0:04:38.480 This is history, it's something[br]that's dirty and messy and painful. 0:04:38.480,0:04:42.267 They're people like us, but they[br]are just in harder circumstances. 0:04:42.267,0:04:44.545 Again the question comes to us: 0:04:44.545,0:04:47.615 "What would we do in such circumstances?" 0:04:47.615,0:04:51.490 This is history as progress,[br]this is a weakish version of history. 0:04:51.490,0:04:55.130 I think that explains partly[br]at least the fascination 0:04:55.130,0:04:57.250 that we have with horrible histories. 0:04:57.250,0:05:02.482 Terry Deary's Horrible Histories have[br]sold something like twenty million copies, 0:05:02.482,0:05:06.577 since they launched in 1993,[br]have been translated into 31 languages. 0:05:06.577,0:05:10.183 They market themselves[br]as "history with the nasty bits left in." 0:05:10.183,0:05:14.078 Of course we are slightly[br]perversely fascinated by gore. 0:05:14.078,0:05:17.993 But it's also about history[br]being to congratulate ourselves, 0:05:17.993,0:05:21.061 to suggest that we are very humane: 0:05:21.061,0:05:24.563 "How civilized we are,[br]we don't do these things to people." 0:05:25.448,0:05:30.045 What we look for in films,[br]and we call it authenticity, 0:05:30.045,0:05:33.125 that those external details[br]often is quite superficial. 0:05:33.125,0:05:35.509 It might, for example,[br]come down to making sure 0:05:35.509,0:05:37.888 they've got the right clothes on, 0:05:37.888,0:05:39.553 although quite often we change that 0:05:39.553,0:05:43.416 so it fits to present day[br]standards of attractiveness as well. 0:05:43.416,0:05:46.286 Tom Hanks was the producer[br]on Band of Brothers and he said, 0:05:46.286,0:05:48.220 "There are two types of authenticity, 0:05:48.220,0:05:50.695 the one that says that you got[br]all the buttons right, 0:05:50.695,0:05:52.391 that the ammunition is correct, [br] 0:05:52.391,0:05:54.869 that the buildings look[br]as they looked in the photo." 0:05:54.869,0:05:57.477 That is relatively easy to achieve. 0:05:57.477,0:06:00.124 But then there's a thing[br]that is much harder. 0:06:00.124,0:06:01.976 There's literally the motivations, 0:06:01.976,0:06:04.816 and the nature of the interplay[br]between the characters, 0:06:04.816,0:06:05.800 because he says, 0:06:05.800,0:06:08.670 "If we can't be absolutely truthful[br]to what they said and did 0:06:08.670,0:06:10.120 at any given time, 0:06:10.120,0:06:12.994 we can at least be[br]as authentic as possible, 0:06:12.994,0:06:18.137 so that it still adheres to the framework[br]of the reality of being there and then." 0:06:18.147,0:06:20.818 I would suggest there's[br]a third type of authenticity, 0:06:20.818,0:06:23.177 the one that we don't go near. 0:06:23.177,0:06:28.096 This is the one that says the past[br]is so very different from our own, 0:06:28.096,0:06:33.809 that we fail to understand it,[br]because we only understand our own time. 0:06:34.309,0:06:35.356 That is because 0:06:35.356,0:06:39.816 people in the past had different[br]mental and imaginative worlds to us. 0:06:40.186,0:06:43.020 The annals historians[br]have called this mentalité, 0:06:43.770,0:06:45.870 the mentalities of these people. 0:06:45.870,0:06:49.820 Perhaps this is the difference between[br]popular history and academic history. 0:06:50.010,0:06:52.699 Is popular history[br]more interested in the similarities, 0:06:52.699,0:06:54.769 rather than the differences? 0:06:54.769,0:06:59.596 You can particularly notice, when you look[br]at attitudes towards sex and religion. 0:06:59.596,0:07:02.856 If you read a historical novel,[br]or you see a film, 0:07:02.856,0:07:05.211 for example, Phillipa Gregory's books, 0:07:05.211,0:07:08.517 wonderful historical novels,[br]that transport you back to the past. 0:07:08.517,0:07:13.249 But quite often the women in them[br]tend to be essentially proto-feminists 0:07:13.249,0:07:15.646 and their attitudes[br]towards sex tend to be: 0:07:15.646,0:07:17.845 'It's quite a good thing,[br]lets get on with it,' 0:07:17.845,0:07:19.980 which before the age of the Pill, 0:07:19.980,0:07:22.410 before there was any reliable conception, 0:07:22.410,0:07:24.775 isn't congruent with the age of the past. 0:07:24.775,0:07:26.497 How about religion? 0:07:26.969,0:07:29.639 Rochefoucauld in the 17th century said, 0:07:29.639,0:07:32.680 "There's always something ridiculous[br]about the emotions of people 0:07:32.680,0:07:35.010 that one has ceased to love". 0:07:35.010,0:07:39.846 If in modern Britain many people[br]have fallen out of love with God, 0:07:39.846,0:07:41.210 we shouldn't underestimate 0:07:41.210,0:07:45.080 quite how intoxicating a power[br]he had in centuries past. 0:07:45.440,0:07:50.389 Make sure the things you read have[br]that sense of reality about world views. 0:07:50.389,0:07:55.380 This is perhaps why Hillary Mantel's books[br]have been so popular and so prize-winning. 0:07:55.390,0:07:57.816 Because although she creates characters, 0:07:57.816,0:08:00.226 historical characters[br]like Chromewell, for example, 0:08:00.226,0:08:03.629 from her own imagination,[br]as is the novelist's prerogative, 0:08:03.629,0:08:07.691 she does actually immerse herself[br]into the world of the past. 0:08:07.691,0:08:10.335 I remember being delighted,[br]when I read "Wolf Hall", 0:08:10.335,0:08:12.912 realizing that she had identified 0:08:12.912,0:08:18.288 that to call something new[br]in the 16th century was not a compliment. 0:08:19.108,0:08:21.619 We have faint echoes of these ideas now. 0:08:21.619,0:08:25.998 The word novelty carries[br]something of the hostility and suspicion 0:08:25.998,0:08:29.003 that the new had in an age, 0:08:29.003,0:08:34.533 when the traditional and the ancient[br]were very powerful things, 0:08:34.533,0:08:37.250 and had a powerful hold on the Tudor mind. 0:08:37.949,0:08:42.840 It's only when we begin to grasp[br]how different the past was, 0:08:42.840,0:08:45.085 how differently people thought in the past 0:08:45.085,0:08:46.730 that we can begin to comprehend 0:08:46.730,0:08:50.490 some of the more bizarre behaviours[br]and beliefs of the past. 0:08:50.490,0:08:53.837 Let me give you a few examples[br]from the period I work on. 0:08:53.837,0:08:57.210 In the end of the 16th century,[br]the beginning of the 17th century, 0:08:57.210,0:09:02.229 across Europe 40,000 to 50,000[br]people, mostly old women, 0:09:02.229,0:09:04.631 where executed as witches. 0:09:06.170,0:09:11.046 In the 16th century in England,[br]beggars where whipped. 0:09:11.687,0:09:16.219 In 1547 it was ordered[br]that vagabonds, the homeless, 0:09:16.219,0:09:20.446 should be branded on the chest[br]with a V made with a hot iron. 0:09:20.446,0:09:24.390 In 1572 a new statute suggested[br]that they should be grievously whipped 0:09:24.390,0:09:26.769 and they should be branded[br]through the ear hole 0:09:26.769,0:09:29.137 with a hot iron, an inch in diameter. 0:09:30.769,0:09:34.520 In 17th century Vienna, a common practice,[br]when a criminal was beheaded, 0:09:34.520,0:09:37.930 was for someone suffering from what[br]was known as the falling sickness 0:09:37.930,0:09:39.970 to rush in with a jug, 0:09:40.509,0:09:45.859 scoop up the hot spurting blood[br]down it in one, and then sprint off. 0:09:45.869,0:09:48.332 This was thought to cure epilepsy. 0:09:49.568,0:09:52.930 In London around the same time,[br]1665, during The Great Plague, 0:09:52.930,0:09:58.316 the chamberlain of the city ordered[br]200,000 cats and 40,000 dogs to be culled, 0:09:58.316,0:10:01.321 because it was thought[br]they spread the plague. 0:10:02.505,0:10:04.887 Women, perhaps this[br]is the most bizarre one of all, 0:10:04.887,0:10:08.296 since the time of Aristotle[br]through till about the 18th century, 0:10:08.296,0:10:11.056 where thought to be deformed men. 0:10:11.756,0:10:14.846 Their uterus were inverted penises. 0:10:14.846,0:10:18.084 They just hadn't had enough heat[br]to push them out of their body 0:10:18.084,0:10:21.156 and of course this produced[br]a great anxiety. 0:10:21.156,0:10:25.975 Occasionally, they had stories circulating[br]of a woman or a girl leaping over a fence 0:10:25.975,0:10:30.758 and then gosh there she discovered[br]she was a man, her penis fell out. 0:10:30.758,0:10:34.196 Of course, if it could be done like that,[br]it could be reversed as well. 0:10:34.196,0:10:38.759 There was a certain anxiety[br]about being a man in early modern England. 0:10:38.759,0:10:44.297 We have a tendency to look at the past[br]and think, they were just like us. 0:10:44.297,0:10:49.180 What was going on inside their heads[br]was really, really different. 0:10:49.180,0:10:52.464 If we are going to get any insight[br]from those TV reality shows at all, 0:10:52.464,0:10:55.289 perhaps it comes when they fall down. 0:10:55.289,0:10:58.635 In 1940's House,[br]the war committee as it were, 0:10:58.635,0:11:02.098 gave them rabbits to eat[br]and the family refused to eat them, 0:11:02.098,0:11:04.996 because of course they had[br]the mentality of today. 0:11:04.996,0:11:06.754 In one called The Trench, 0:11:06.754,0:11:09.430 where a group of young boys pretended 0:11:09.430,0:11:14.702 to go to have an experience of being[br]on the front line in World War One, 0:11:14.702,0:11:19.710 a Corporal brought along a grey coat[br]of one who had said to have fallen, 0:11:19.710,0:11:23.430 there was something quite poignant[br]and completely ridiculous about the moment 0:11:23.430,0:11:28.160 because of course, the chap hadn't fallen,[br]he hadn't died, he'd just left the show. 0:11:28.160,0:11:31.133 The reality of that moment[br]of what it must have been like 0:11:31.133,0:11:36.526 to lose a friend, a companion,[br]in World War One, was still missing. 0:11:37.206,0:11:39.309 How we view the past matters, 0:11:39.309,0:11:42.019 whether we see it as foreign or familiar, 0:11:42.019,0:11:45.642 particularly, for example, it matters[br]in questions of moral judgement. 0:11:45.642,0:11:47.797 Can we judge the past? 0:11:47.797,0:11:49.687 Academic historians generally say no. 0:11:49.687,0:11:51.485 We need to try and understand it. 0:11:51.485,0:11:54.496 We need to give it[br]all the respect it's due. 0:11:55.275,0:11:58.009 When you think[br]of the Holocaust and Hitler, 0:11:58.009,0:12:02.220 when you think of slavery,[br]would it not be wrong to judge? 0:12:02.220,0:12:03.943 The historian Collingwood said, 0:12:03.943,0:12:08.510 "To pass moral judgement on the past,[br]is to fall into the fallacy of imagining 0:12:08.510,0:12:13.060 that somewhere behind a veil,[br]the past is still happening, 0:12:13.060,0:12:15.396 as if it's now being enacted[br]in the next room, 0:12:15.396,0:12:18.006 and we ought to break in and stop it. 0:12:18.656,0:12:24.210 These things have been, they are over,[br]there is nothing to be done about them." 0:12:26.569,0:12:29.198 We need to seek to understand the past. 0:12:29.198,0:12:32.512 But we need not to do[br]just historical clothing, 0:12:32.512,0:12:36.014 that we always call costume,[br]for some reason I never understand. 0:12:36.014,0:12:40.978 We need to don their mind-set,[br]we need to get out our guidebooks. 0:12:40.978,0:12:43.638 Is the past a foreign country? 0:12:43.638,0:12:45.453 Yes, very much so. 0:12:45.997,0:12:50.702 But it's different in ways[br]that we haven't imagined. 0:12:51.413,0:12:55.756 It's a bit like saying that France isn't[br]so different because they eat baguettes, 0:12:55.756,0:12:57.672 but because they think nothing odd 0:12:57.672,0:12:59.972 about having a mistress[br]and a wife at a funeral. 0:12:59.972,0:13:02.541 They just have a different mentality. 0:13:03.508,0:13:06.040 Why do we make the past so cosy? 0:13:06.040,0:13:11.640 I would suggest it's because the past[br]is not just foreign, it's also dangerous. 0:13:13.369,0:13:18.266 We have a sense that, behind that veil,[br]there are glinting swords and barred teeth 0:13:18.266,0:13:20.297 that if we actually knew 0:13:20.297,0:13:23.157 what went on in the past[br]and what went on in their minds, 0:13:23.157,0:13:25.788 we might understand a bit more[br]about the human condition 0:13:25.788,0:13:27.688 than we really want to. 0:13:27.688,0:13:31.282 But I would suggest too that,[br]if we wanted to get to that foreign land, 0:13:31.282,0:13:35.575 we have to be as it said the Macbeth:[br]"bold, bloody and resolute." 0:13:35.575,0:13:37.108 We need to be brave, 0:13:37.108,0:13:39.538 we need to step through the looking glass, 0:13:39.538,0:13:41.388 into the other side, 0:13:41.388,0:13:44.132 and not keep on[br]gazing at our own reflections. 0:13:44.132,0:13:45.529 Thank you. 0:13:45.529,0:13:46.850 (Applause)