I have been watching Andrew Roberts’
series on the electric television concerning the career of Mr Bonaparte. As a
right wing nut job with an overblown ego, it is not surprising that he has not
been judged favourably and Napoleon is not much better.
There have been some interesting historical
documentaries shown over the last couple of years; the series on the Spanish
armada was pretty good despite the narrator having to appear periodically on a
boat in La Manche just in case there were those watching who had no idea what
the sea looks like ffs.
I am puzzled by the practice of filming, at
great unnecessary expense, the narrators strolling about in various locations
(some of them not associated with the narrative). At least dear Lucy Worsley in
her series on the Georgians affected a silly walk to add to the drama. Roberts walks
around like a bemused twat looking at stuff as though he had not seen it
before.
At least in the Armada series they had
several historians giving slightly different interpretations. The Napoleon
series would have been improved by having someone arguing with Roberts pointing
out that while Nappy introduced some liberal reforms and brought a degree of stability
following years of post-revolutionary chaos, he was still an asshat. Perhaps
would have been better had this someone replaced Roberts altogether. I had to
install some anti-smug software on my sky box after 3 hours of this man.
I like to watch this stuff to learn more
about events/periods/people in history but I want some assurance that if what
is being presented as fact is just one person’s opinion then that is made
clear.
Let us have some more personable
presenters than Andrew Roberts he had as much charisma as Mr Thingy who taught
History in the 3rd form when I was at school. Or was it French? Or
was it the 4th form? Or was it Miss Thingy?
