The History Bloke

The History Bloke http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5124114.stm

By Sean Coughlan BBC News Magazine History has got hip. And genealogy is getting radical. Popular history's poster boy, Tony Robinson, explains why the past means so much to the present. And how a "turnip-loving moron" came to his rescue. Radical genealogy. They're not words that usually go together. But Tony Robinson isn't the usual kind of history presenter. He's not so much the history man as the history bloke. Forget the dusty archives and fake-heraldry of family trees, Robinson speaks with passion about how family history can change the way people see themselves and the world around them. "How do you know who you are unless you know where you came from?" Robinson, presenter of the Time Team archaeology programme and formerly Baldrick from Blackadder, says that putting genealogical information online, such as the 1841 census, will have far-reaching implications. Beaten up "Up until now, it has been the preserve of aristocrats and kings and queens. But suddenly, for the first time, everyone has got the possibility of owning, not just their own semi like Mrs Thatcher wanted, but also owning their own history." My dad fell to the ground saying 'I'm not Jewish, I'm not Jewish' "None of us know how it will affect the zeitgeist once it is out there. But inevitably it will mean changes. It's more important than people have clocked onto yet." "In my own case, people have always said that I looked Jewish, and my dad was beaten up by the Fascists in the East End in 1938 for being Jewish - and he fell to the ground saying 'I'm not Jewish, I'm not Jewish.' "But now, when I look back in my genealogy, I see that my great great great grandmother is Julia Levy - and suddenly there's a new perception on who I am." If they'd had ancestry websites in Nazi Germany in the 1930s, he says "it wouldn't half have been difficult to find an Aryan race". Robinson, an engaging, spiky 59 year old, says that "ancestry is archaeology without the muddy hands". 'Stroppy' And it's archaeology with which he is currently most associated - with Time Team pulling off the unlikely trick of successfully combining reality television with bejumpered academics. In The Rag Trade, 1975 (left) and as Baldrick in Blackadder III, 1987 If Robinson has thrived as the bloke-in-the-pub interpreter for these history professionals, he says it's a reflection of his own background. "I didn't go to university, I left school at 16. There's part of me that's a stroppy auto-didact that feels 'why should knowledge be the preserve of just some people?'. "I used to attempt to read hard books and didn't really understand them - and then I realised that this vocabulary was an artificial barrier - and it made me angry and shirty." Robinson's route into becoming the acceptable face of archaeology was an odd one - through a "turnip-loving moron". At the age of 36, he got the part of Baldrick, the wart-sporting, rat-trapping fall guy in the Blackadder series. The comedy was a popular and critical success - and "suddenly doors opened". He was able to make his own documentaries. Leaving a mark "By the time I started the first Blackadder I'd already been acting for a quarter of a century. Suddenly to be able to tell my own stories about something that mattered was an enormous liberation." And it meant he was able to explore his passion for history, archaeology and genealogy, including his work as spokesperson for a genealogy website, ancestry.co.uk. I didn't set out to be the Jamie Oliver for the elderly "Archaeology is about the mark of ordinary people on the landscape - it isn't mostly gold chariots and tiaras, it's mostly bits of old fence." "It's the mark of one person that is so exciting, one person's thumbprint. Recently we dug up something with a mason's mark, it was one geezer, one artisan, that I had a little relationship with. It's an anchor for your imagination. "There's something terribly reassuring knowing that someone was in this field 700 years ago who made this mark." History is now part of the television mainstream - and its lens is already being turned on re-interpreting the 20th Century. So how does Robinson think our own era will be seen? What future historians will find most appalling will be the way that old people are treated, he says - a point made powerfully in his documentary this year about his mother's death. "People will look back on our treatment of the elderly with the same kind of disbelief that we look back on child labour. We think how could they have done that? The BBC's Who Do You Think You Are series taps into the genealogy bug "Yet, at present, we consign a high proportion of our frail elderly to low-level torture for the last few years of their lives - and almost completely cut it out of our imaginations. It's creepy, weird stuff." "I didn't set out to be the Jamie Oliver for the elderly," he says. But this latest campaign adds to a career that already includes an eclectic mix of actor, director, presenter, documentary maker, political activist and author. Whatever the subject, he says it can be made accessible and appealing to a wide audience. "Get the story right and they'll listen - there are no uninteresting subjects, just uninteresting ways of talking about them." Cunning, very cunning. Add your comments on this story, using the form below. Name Your e-mail address Town/city and country Your comment