Jeremy Paxman offers a view of the first world war that has its insights but avoids important questions that need answeringThe battle to carve up the 100th anniversary of the first world war began early this month with education secretary Michael Gove accusing historians and Blackadder – he didn't appear to make much distinction between the two – of peddling leftwing myths that the conflict was "a misbegotten shambles, perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite", while arguing himself that the Germans were entirely to blame for starting it. Cue outrage from every serious historian apart from Max Hastings, with Jeremy Paxman getting in on the act by adding that he didn't think Gove's concept of a "just war" was terribly helpful. Tit-for-tat, David Cameron responded by saying he didn't rate Paxman's history books very highly and reiterating Gove's position that "the first world war was a war fought in a just cause, that our ancestors thought it would be bad to have a Prussian-dominated Europe". A hundred years on, the in-fighting shows no signs of letting up.There has been one clear winner, though, in the race to be first off the mark with what promises to be four years of intensive programming to commemorate the war, and that is Paxman himself, whose Britain's Great War (BBC1) beat the centenary gun by the best part of eight months. Surprisingly, though, Paxman's version of history is one that neither Gove nor Cameron could have any objection to being used as part of the... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2014-01-28 00:00:00 UTC ]