Channel 4 understands its viewers’ appetite for fresh historical perspectives, so the genre is at the heart of its public service role, magnifying public appetite to the point where Dr David Starkey can boast about out-rating Ali G. Channel 4 has not settled solely for conventional storytelling: it has sought out untold accounts and new source material for strands like Secret History and promoted revisionist theories and analyses, as espoused in The War of The World. Above all, it has tried to bring its audience closer to their historical counterparts, by recounting familiar events from the perspective of the common man – Plague, Fire, War, Treason – and asking modern viewers to relive the experiences of their forebears through living history experiments such as The 1900 House
and That’ll Teach ’Em.
In This Chapter
- Introduction
- The Future of the Monarchy by Dr David Starkey
- Dancing Towards the Icebergs by Jonty Ollif-Cooper
- Paying the Price of Empire by Jan Morris
- Digging Deep by Tony Robinson
- Henrietta’s Teachings by Daisy Leitch
- Gallery
Chapter Gallery
