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10 questions for Dominic Sandbrook
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Who was the greatest-ever military general? What was history's most disastrous party? Is identity politics ruining the study of history? And what on Earth was the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth?
All these questions and more are answered by the co-host of the smash-hit 'The Rest is History' podcast, Dominic Sandbrook.
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Transcript
Introduction & Listener Gratitude
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello, it's Will here. Before we get stuck into this week's show, I just wanted to say a big thank you to everyone who has been leaving us their ratings and reviews. It's a wonderful way to help us grow Australiana, and it's super quick and easy. If you are yet to do so, please leave us one now so we can remain in the good graces of the mystical, algorithmic podcast gods that control our destiny. Now, cue the jingle.
Will's History Interest Rekindled
00:00:40
Speaker
G'day and welcome to Australiana from The Spectator Australia. I'm Will Kingston. Every child is forced to engage with history in school, and that act of coercion can leave a sour taste. It's the same phenomena behind the book we hated studying in English class, only to pick up later in adulthood and enjoy immensely. I was quite a good history student, and then proceeded to ignore it from the moment I put my pen down in my HSC Ancient History exam.
00:01:09
Speaker
And then, one day, over a decade later, a friend told me about a podcast called The Rest is History, featuring a couple of witty English historians. I speak for myself and countless others globally when I say that it has reignited a long-dormant love of history. The podcast has become a cultural phenomena in the process.
Interview with Dominic Sambrook
00:01:29
Speaker
I'm thrilled to be joined by the Rest Is History's co-host, Dominic Sambrook. Before history's superstardom beckoned, Dominic was already well-known for being one of the foremost historians on modern British and American history, and for his sharp political and social commentary for The Daily Mail, and as of a couple of weeks ago, the Times.
00:01:49
Speaker
Dominic, welcome to Australia. Thank you. Thank you very much. Well, it's a great treat to be on and especially to hear such a generous introduction. Thank you very much. My pleasure. Well, I should actually warn you, we did have Tom Holland on the podcast recently to talk about hacks. So this is a de facto show, rating showdown between the history hosts. I want that on the record from the outset. I reassure listeners, I will be so much more interesting than Tom must have been.
00:02:17
Speaker
Well, the numbers will reveal all.
Impact of Identity Politics on History
00:02:20
Speaker
I have 10 history questions for you. The only thread that binds them together is, is my curiosity. Question number one is inspired by a recent review on Apple podcasts for the rest is history. Three out of five stars, which I thought was, was actually usually the one or five. That's a lot of ones. I don't want to, I don't want to blow our own trumpet, but we don't normally get them in the middle. So this is, this is a bit different.
00:02:45
Speaker
No, for Australiana, I've noticed that same phenomenon, so that's why I was quite curious about this one. It's from someone called Cobiculous, and I'll read it. These two really do know their stuff and often present very balanced and multifaceted analysis of global events. I learn so much from them. Dominic has some weird politics. Look him up. There's an awful Daily Mail article, but it's not like he's right wing or anything. He seems to feel identity politics ruins history, which I just don't agree with.
00:03:12
Speaker
Now, Dominic, I assume, code
Teaching History in Schools
00:03:15
Speaker
-biculous meant it is ruining history as a discipline. So, question number one, is identity politics ruining history, Dominic?
00:03:25
Speaker
Um, Golly, I'm just trying to think which article actually he would have, he would have, which of the many he would have, um, or she would have taken offense at. I mean, who knows? Is identity politics ruining history? History always reflect, historical writing always reflects the times in which it is being written. So we live in an age of identity politics. I don't really care for identity politics, to be completely honest with you.
00:03:49
Speaker
I can safely say most of our listeners will agree with you. It's kind of inevitable that history will reflect it. I think what has changed in historical writing in the last, let's say, 20 years.
00:04:02
Speaker
which I'm not massively comfortable with, is activist historical writing. So in other words, the writer, I mean, obviously that activism these days is driven by identity politics. So the writer is actually more keen to kind of advertise their own virtue
00:04:22
Speaker
or to sort of boost their particular cause than they are to emphasize the otherness, if you like, of the past, how different the past was. And I think, obviously, there are lots of examples of that, you know, when people are writing about the history of immigration or race relations or gender or whatever it might be. And I think, actually, an overt obsession with our own concerns is a bad thing for history.
00:04:48
Speaker
because it turns history into a mirror. You just look at it. I mean, this is the identity politics point. There's a lot of people writing history who really just want to look into that mirror and see themselves reflected back in their own concerns. For me as a historian, the joy of history is that you're studying other people whose values were totally different from our own, living in a different world. And if you see it all through the prism of your own identity politics, which is often so limiting and so narrow, then you miss all the complexity and the richness and the diversity of the past.
00:05:15
Speaker
I think hand in hand with the identity politics stuff is a kind of a really moralistic approach. You know, lecturing people in the past, telling them off, finger wagging at them. I don't find that attractive at all. So the three out of 10 reviewer would probably be very unmolified by this answer because I, I mean, actually the truth is I present a much more moderate, emollient face to the world than I have in reality will. That's the terrible thing.
00:05:45
Speaker
Well, hopefully we can peel back the mask over the course of this interview. A separate related question on that is how this all reflects in the teaching of history for younger people. You're passionate about the teaching of history for young people. You've got a wonderful series of books called Adventures in Time, which is aimed at kids. Is this something you're concerned about in terms of how history is being taught in schools?
00:06:07
Speaker
Yes, I think so. I think, again, I think what's happening a lot with the teaching of history in schools is that children are being given a very worthy, very kind of pious, very kind of hand-wringing view of history, which is often a very partisan view of history. So it's gone from the extreme that you would have had in kind of Edwardian Britain, where it's very flag waving and history produced of the high point of the Age of Imperialism. It's now gone to the total other extreme,
00:06:34
Speaker
where it feels like in some schools they're studying nothing but the crimes of empire or whatever you want to call it. And I think, yes, I think what that misses is either complexity of the past, which is so important, but also you have to make children interested in history by having enthusiasm for the past rather than just seeing it as a source of woe and misery and all that stuff. I mean, I was interested in history
00:07:03
Speaker
as so many of our listeners probably were, because I loved the romance and the glamour of knights and castles. Now, of course, when I carried on studying it, I looked behind the myths and I understood the nuances and the complexity and there were dark sides and all of that stuff. But if you don't give people that initial enthusiasm and that sense of joy in the past, and actually, I think completely reasonably, a sense of pride in their own country or wherever that country might be, then
00:07:33
Speaker
you're never going to get. They're not going to want to do it. Actually, we see across the Western world, children dropping history when they get the first opportunity in
Balanced Historical Narratives
00:07:40
Speaker
their teens. I think that is a crying shame because history should be a subject that people are excited to be studying rather than depressed.
00:07:48
Speaker
This isn't on my list, but I'm curious to follow up on that. How do you as a historian go about finding that balance? You're a modern historian. Say you're writing on Thatcher, arguably the most divisive politician of the 20th century. Well, one of the most divisive politicians of the 20th century. How do you go about
00:08:04
Speaker
finding that balance for figures like that who have emotionally charged responses to them. I've often been asked that, and the answer is always the same. You do it completely straight. You do it well. So with Mrs. Thatcher, for example, she was, as you say, an immensely divisive prime minister that I can't think of any prime minister in modern times who would inspire such a visceral reaction among people for or against. So the way to do that is to make that part of the story.
00:08:34
Speaker
You know that's part of the story she's a very divisive person she always was that's part of the appeal of her that she was a very partisan aggressive kind of politician some people love to some people didn't.
00:08:46
Speaker
I write about that. I want to write a really interesting book, so I want to have lots of different voices because that will make it a better book. So I have people who adore Mrs. Thatcher and think she was the best thing since sliced bread. And on the other hand, people who think, oh, she was terrible and she ran Britain to the ground. And you give them both. I have my own view and that comes across, no doubt. But I also give the other views time to breathe.
00:09:11
Speaker
Now, you mentioned the kids books that I do, Adventures in Time. Some of the subjects I've done in those are difficult areas. The most recent one is about the Spanish conquest of Mexico and An Cortes Montesuma, the fall of the Aztecs.
00:09:27
Speaker
Again, there's a lot of slavery in that. There's a lot of massacres. There's all of that stuff. It doesn't have to be controversial if you just tell it straight and you tell both sides and you can do that for children, actually. You just don't patronize them and you don't preach to them by giving them only one side of the story. I think if everybody reads it and feels like, yeah, you've done it justice, you have given both sides time to breathe, then that's all you can do as a historian.
00:09:55
Speaker
Well said, and I think not patronising or preaching applies equally to adults as much as kids.
Speculation on Britain & WWI
00:10:00
Speaker
Right. Question two, and it's a what if. What if Great Britain never entered World War I? That's my favourite what if, Will. The interesting thing about that one is that Britain might not have entered World War I. So right up to the point when it happened, so we're talking late July 1914, there was an expectation
00:10:17
Speaker
in Britain, and also on the continent, that Britain might well stay out of it. And in fact, Herbert Asquith, Herbert Henry Asquith, who was Prime Minister, the Liberal Prime Minister in Britain that summer, he writes letters to people saying, you know, it looks like there's going to be a big European bust up, but we can probably stay out of it. So, you know, we don't need to worry too much. And then there were people in Britain who wanted to get involved, so Edward Gray, the Foreign Secretary, who had basically promised the French that we would.
00:10:44
Speaker
And there were, of course, once the Germans went through Belgium, which was normally neutral, then Britain was legally obliged and felt morally obliged to intervene on behalf of the Belgians.
00:10:59
Speaker
had we stayed out, I think, well, obviously there's no Gallipoli for one thing, so who knows what would have happened to Mel Gibson's career. That's the most important consequence out of all this. Exactly, exactly. The Patriots would never have been made. So I think what would have happened is probably the central powers would have won.
00:11:22
Speaker
I think without the Royal Navy blockading Germany, without the British Army eventually kind of throwing itself into the Western Front in a big way, without Britain's economic and industrial kind of might, I think eventually the central powers would have won. But they probably wouldn't have won it completely on their own terms. Personally, I think that would have been a better outcome. Actually, this is the thing that lots of you have lots of people switching off the podcast now. So I think the results of the First World War were
00:11:50
Speaker
Bolshevism in Russia, the rise of Lenin and Stalin on the one hand, and on the other hand, of course.
00:11:56
Speaker
the Weimar Republic in Germany, the rise of Hitler and all of that stuff. And I think if you have a scenario in which, I don't think you could have a worse scenario than that. I think given that these are some of the worst mass murderers in human history, I think any other scenario is probably better. So I controversially, because most people in Britain think this is nonsense, but I think Britain would have been better off. I understand why we went in, but I think we would
Legacy of the British Empire
00:12:20
Speaker
have been better off staying out.
00:12:21
Speaker
I've also heard you say before you think Britain should have ended on the other side. Well, this is the thing, Will. If you're like me and you see all human history as a colossal existential struggle between Anglo-Saxonism and Gallicism, this was the chance for Britain. The French thought we're on their side. This was the chance to really live up to the perfidious Albion stereotypes, stab them in the back and join the war on the other side, which nobody would have expected, and to knock out the French forever. But we didn't take it.
00:12:51
Speaker
We've lived to pay the price. Well, we've got a rugby world cup in France at the moment, so hopefully some small level of retribution on the rugby field. Question three, to wade into perhaps even murkier waters, was the British Empire on balance a good or a bad thing for the world? I mean, that is a really, really good question. Well, first of all,
00:13:19
Speaker
I think, by and large, we would say that, well, I think there are two things to start off with, saying, I mean, I could give an answer that would go on for hours, a very rambling answer, but first of all, I think it's not a historian's job to look at the past and say good things, bad things. So for example, if we looked at the Persian Empire and I said to you, well, I think the Persian Empire on balance was a really good thing or a bad thing, I think you would probably find that a weird thing to say because we don't have these sort of neat moral categories for things back in the past.
00:13:47
Speaker
So I think actually to take something as big as the British Empire, it's complicated. The British Empire was always very chaotic and it was never very coherent. The different bits of it were governed. Ordinary people never knew the difference between a protectorate, a mandate, a colony, and the Dominion. And probably a lot of people in Westminster didn't know the difference.
00:14:07
Speaker
Of course, it took place over many generations. The idea that you can take one label, as so many people love to do now, by the way, and they say, oh, it was all terrible, and they stick the label on it. It was so different. Some people were greedy and were out to make money. Some people were genuinely motivated by altruism.
00:14:25
Speaker
by philanthropy and so on. Mission risen, all these people. Now, sometimes they had unanticipated consequences that weren't good consequences necessarily, but it's such a complicated story. It's got any one label on it. I think it's very reductive. But by and large,
00:14:42
Speaker
I've just been reading a book about a really good book, which is about the British Empire at its logistical high point. The British Empire reached its biggest ever extent in September 1923, when it was given Palestine as a mandate by the League of Nations.
00:14:58
Speaker
You know, one of the... I've been talking so enthusiastic, I've completely forgotten what I was going to say. Anyway, I guess the point is that it's a very... Yes, I've now remembered the point. Brilliant. So, in this book about 1923, one of the points it makes is that
00:15:18
Speaker
the Indian nationalists and so on who are agitating at that point for freedom. They could not have done that under a lot of the other European empires. They have more freedom, they have more education. The liberal imperialism of the British has actually given them the space, sometimes without meaning to, has given them the space to press for independence and freedom. So I think the British Empire is unusual
00:15:43
Speaker
because of its stated ambitions and all those kinds of things, and because it has such a mixture of motives and impulses, it's very unusual having the seeds of its own dissolution in it.
00:15:57
Speaker
And I think that that's one of the things that makes it much more attractive, I would say, than other empires. The other thing I'd say about empires in general, through most of human history, I would argue, of course, empire means a degree of control and coercion. But for a lot of people, it also means stability.
00:16:14
Speaker
And the alternative is not a rosy kind of social democratic welfare state. The alternative is anarchy, is warlordism, or is nationalistic ethnic cleansing or whatever it might be. So actually, now that I've argued myself into basically giving you the simple answer, which is on balance, I would say probably a good thing.
00:16:37
Speaker
Pax Romana was a good example of
History's Role in Modern Policy
00:16:40
Speaker
that stability that empire can bring, albeit from an autocratic state. It's interesting, we are having conversations at the moment in Australia about a referendum that will occur later in the year. In fact, it will occur perhaps just after the rest of history arrives on our shorts, or maybe just before. And that is to give Indigenous Australians a voice in our constitution, a representative body that can advise government.
00:17:07
Speaker
And it's brought up the conversation around British colonialism. And a lot of people see this as a way to make up for the sins of the past. How do you feel about the way in which history is sometimes used as a way to inform what we do today and perhaps as a guilt mechanism to inform present policy? I don't agree with guilt personally. I don't have any views, by the way, on the Australian thing, because I actually know so little about Australia, it's embarrassing. I'm going to have to...
00:17:36
Speaker
I'm going to have to read up on the plane. But on the guilt thing, I don't agree with the guilt thing at all. And the example I often give when people say, oh, golly, don't you feel terribly guilty about what happened in the 18th century or something? As I say, listen, I have German friends with small children. Can you honestly tell me it is reasonable that those small children, by the moment they were born, they came in tainted
00:18:03
Speaker
with guilt for what happened under the Third Reich. I think it would be monstrous, actually, to say that of a child born in the 2020s. You carry the guilt for what happened between 1933 and 1945. I equally think it is mad and similarly monstrous, actually,
00:18:23
Speaker
to say of people born in 21st century Britain, let's say, or France, or indeed any country, you bear the guilt, not for something that your parents or grandparents did, but for something that people who lived in an utterly different context did. So the argument is sometimes made, well, bad things happened in the 1770s or something, therefore Britain right now should make some sort of reparation. But of course, Britain contains a large population
00:18:51
Speaker
of people of relatively recent immigrants. Should they make the reparation? How would that work? You telling me that an Indian family, a family of Indian extraction living in Leicester in England, the most multicultural city?
00:19:04
Speaker
who their grandparents moved over in the 1950s or something, should they be paying reparations for slavery? That would seem a bizarre argument to make. I just think guilt is an unhealthy feeling. People say, well, you don't mind people feeling pride, but I think pride is a relative within reason.
00:19:27
Speaker
is a relatively healthy thing for people to think, for anybody politic, you know, needs people to feel a degree of pride about living in that community. But a sense of guilt, I don't agree with that actually. I don't think, I mean, I guess part of this comes from my view of history is that people always behave very badly. My view of human nature is that people deep down, well, you know, if they're given the opportunity or they're pushed into a corner or whatever, they'll always behave badly. So the fact that people, when people say, oh my goodness,
00:19:56
Speaker
look at this monstrous behavior in 1750 or in 1890 or 1949 or whenever it might be. And they sort of clutch their pearls and they pretend to be very shocked by it. I'm not shocked at all. I mean, I think people will always behave badly, whether they're British, French, German, Australian, whoever they are. So I'm not shocked by that. And I think to lumber people in the present with a sense of responsibility for it is just not right.
Western Historical Self-Criticism
00:20:20
Speaker
What that answers got me reflecting on is the arbitrary nature of this though. So the Nazi example that you made.
00:20:27
Speaker
Never in a million years would a German child be forced to apologize for what the Nazis did. It would never, ever happen. You're right. It would be considered monstrous. In Australia the other day, there was a news story about primary school kids who were being asked to write letters to apologize for the colonial history within Australia. This was a controversial news story, but obviously a primary school teacher thought it was acceptable to do that.
00:20:52
Speaker
Where does this arbitrariness come from, is where I'm saying, well, is it okay in some circumstances, but there's some other circumstance where it just doesn't, it's not even on the table. Right. I think it's because there is a sense of, since the dissolution of kind of European empires and so on, but a lot of this is actually driven by the civil rights movement in America post the civil rights since the 1960s. There is a sense that there is this kind of unique sin at the heart of Western civilization, isn't there?
00:21:18
Speaker
And it's examples where, you know, the classic example that people get when they're bickering up with each other on social media is people will be arguing about slavery. And some people say, you know, we're such a terrible business, transatlantic slave trade, of course, which it was absolutely horrendous. And then other people say, oh, I don't see you going on about the Ottoman slave trade or the slave trade across Africa or whatever. And then then the argument will get even more heated and people say, oh, you're only trying to bring that up because you're trying to minimize
00:21:46
Speaker
British enrolments in the slave trade or whatever. But of course, the intrusion of the Ottoman slave trade into that discussion is unwelcome because people don't want to beat up on Turkey. What they really want to do is to beat up on their own country. There's always been, I think, particularly in Britain and kind of Anglo-Saxon countries, a degree of self-flagellation. George Orwell famously said that left-wing intellectuals in the 1930s
00:22:11
Speaker
would rather be seen stealing from the poor box in church than standing to sing God Save the King. I think there's always an element of that that lies behind a lot of these discussions. As I said, my view of history is history is full of monstrous atrocities and terrible behavior and horrendous suffering. No one country has a monopoly either on good or on evil, but actually what lies behind a lot of these historical debates
00:22:37
Speaker
is a strong degree, I think, of self-flagellation, a desire to punish what is seen as the over dog. So with your Australian example, obviously the feeling there is, oh, we are the over dog, and we should be punished for it. And if no one else is going to punish us, we should punish ourselves. And it's health, and we ought to feel guilt. We ought to don the hair shirt, and our children should be encouraged to don the hair shirt. And as I've said, I don't think you hide the fact that there has been
00:23:03
Speaker
cruelty, greed, all these things in the past. But equally, I don't think that it just seems to me bizarre that a good way to make people well-adjusted democratic citizens invested in their country is to make them feel awful about being in the country. That's certainly not how I would do it.
00:23:24
Speaker
Yeah, no, I agree. And we had former Deputy Prime Minister John Anson on a couple of weeks ago, and he also made note of that self-flagellating or self-loathing instinct at the heart of a lot of Western culture, which is quite troubling.
Oliver Cromwell's Complex Legacy
00:23:37
Speaker
Question four, who is the most misunderstood person in history?
00:23:43
Speaker
Oh, what a great question. The most misunderstood person in history. So there are so many. My party piece, as it were, is which I get a lot of grief from. I get a lot of grief from your listeners with Irish extraction. I'm a big fan of Oliver Cromwell. So Oliver Cromwell, I'm sure everybody will know, was the law protector after the execution of Charles I in England in the
00:24:11
Speaker
1650s. He did not ban Christmas, which everybody thinks he did. It's actually Parliament that had already acted against Christmas. Everyone thinks Oliver Cromwell hated fun, and he's the sort of soul of Puritanism. He is a Puritan, but actually Oliver Cromwell was very fun-loving.
00:24:27
Speaker
So there's accounts of him dancing at his daughter's wedding and playing pranks. It was a jape star. Now, obviously, I probably wouldn't make this argument in Dublin. I certainly didn't when we did our Rest is History live show. But I would still say that Cromwell has become an avatar for some people of what they see as, you know, sort of British villainy and stuff. But actually Cromwell's policies in Ireland, which do seem
00:24:50
Speaker
shocking to readers in the 2020s. They need to be seen in the context of a long history of actually English, what would be seen today as bad behavior in Ireland. And he is continuing the policy that had started under Elizabeth I, where everyone thinks it's brilliant. And that actually
00:25:06
Speaker
Cromwell is a really interesting and unusual character of somebody who becomes self-flagellating. Cromwell is very self-flagellating. He gets this kind of supreme power, but he's not a dictator. He is not particularly corrupt. He's not particularly cruel or oppressive or any of those things. I think he's a much more interesting in combat. He spends so much time worrying about what God's plan is for him, which dictators don't normally tend to do. I think he is a really, really interesting, just a
00:25:35
Speaker
to our eyes, a strange figure and a fascinating one. So I think he would be my choice. Yeah, you pick up on what I find fascinating about Cromwell in that history is one long story of people having the opportunity to seize absolute power and almost always they take it and then almost always absolute power corrupts absolutely and then it all ends in bloodshed and tears.
00:25:59
Speaker
He had that opportunity and he showed a level of restraint, which most other dictators, I wouldn't call him necessarily a dictator, but it's a linguistic debate, but he didn't do that. Why do you think he did not take the opportunity to crown himself king and take absolute power? Well, of course, he famously is offered the crown and he turns it down. He turns it down for a couple of reasons. One is that some of the officers in his new model army
00:26:22
Speaker
are much more Republican and they got rid of one king and they don't want another one. So it would be controversial. But that's not a problem for lots of dictators, as you say. I think it's because actually the core of Cromwell is a deeply, deeply religious man. He turns out to be a really skillful politician, but he is
00:26:43
Speaker
He had gone through... I mean, this is what's so interesting about him. And this is not, again, not something you say of most dictators. He was a really obscure man for the first few decades of his life. He was a nobody, really. And he goes through this intense religious crisis, a sort of midlife crisis. And he'd kind of failed in a farming venture. And he's out there, you can imagine him in the sort of east of England, very flat. It would have been very underpopulated in those days, kind of this bleak, this quite bleak, beautiful, but bleak landscape.
00:27:12
Speaker
having this massive crisis of the soul. And after that, he's always, always, all through the political twists and turns of his career, he is always praying for hours, wondering what God wants for him, wondering if he's doing the right thing
00:27:28
Speaker
seized by indecision. He really believes that God has a plan for him and for the world. I mean, lots of people do in the mid 17th century. And he's suffering kind of spiritual agonies, wondering what the right thing is. He really believes in this stuff. It's not just window dressing. So I think when he becomes Lord Protector, that doesn't desert him. He's still spending long periods of time on his knees.
00:27:54
Speaker
head bent in prayer, wondering what God's plan is for him. And there is a kind of, weirdly, there is a kind of toleration to Cromwell. So Cromwell is a dissenter. He's not part of the kind of organization of the established church. And I think there is a place in his England for people who, more so than maybe, and Charles I's England, for people who are a bit different and think differently. Now, of course, that's not to say it's a kind of 21st century paradise. It obviously isn't. But I think Cromwell is not
00:28:26
Speaker
He's independent-minded. He doesn't want to force everybody necessarily into a little sort of theological straitjacket. He wants people to be God-fearing, and he hopes they will be, and they keep letting him down because they do things like play football on Sundays and things that he thinks are unreasonable.
00:28:43
Speaker
But I think all of this makes him a very unsettling figure for us, because we tend to see everything through a very secular kind of lens. And actually, the key to Cromwell is that relationship with God, which if you're not particularly religious, you kind of find hard to comprehend. And of course, we can't possibly know what was going on in his head or his soul. So all of that, I think, makes him different from so many dictators, people who set out to grasp power because they were ambitious.
00:29:08
Speaker
Common doesn't seem to have been terribly ambitious for the first part of his life. So I think it's that religious dimension that makes him different.
Ideology's Influence on Leaders
00:29:15
Speaker
You raised a really interesting question around the power of ideology to influence actions for good or ill. And when you said he was a nobody for the first period of his life, the twig in my mind was went to Hitler and you've talked about on the podcast, very different circumstances. He was also a nobody and he was radicalized and the ideology there was communism, was fascism.
00:29:40
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. That would also be an interesting, what if historically, if Hitler was radicalized the other way. But it is interesting that that radicalization towards that fascist ideology led to incredibly devastating consequences and led to a desire for absolute power where Cromwell's
00:29:57
Speaker
radicalization may not be quite the right word, but may not be far off towards Christianity and religion in that sense took him in a completely different direction. Yes, it is. It's a really interesting one actually with Hitler because Hitler
00:30:11
Speaker
The thing about Hitler is, first of all, Hitler wasn't mad. He definitely wasn't mad. He doesn't stand upside down and paint himself blue or something. He's lazy and he doesn't do his paperwork, but he functions normally. But the other thing is, through all that first part of his life, Hitler was not a violent man.
00:30:32
Speaker
I suppose you could compare him with someone like Rob Speer to that extent. Slightly different from Stalin, who is a bit more of a gangster. With somebody like Hitler, I mean Hitler, he's probably brutalized by the First World War, I think, Will, to an extent that I think we have perhaps forgotten the extent to which an entire generation were completely desensitized to violence by the experience of the trenches. Of course, Hitler was quite brave in the trenches. He was a dispatch runner and he was given the Iron Cross, recommended by a Jewish officer, ironically.
00:30:59
Speaker
But I guess part of it is that idea of having the blueprint, I think, a blueprint in which human lives are expendable. And that's something that obviously Hitler hasn't come with Stalin or with Mao. They believe in a kind of utopia. They believe they have the key to that utopia. And they say, well, you know, what's the loss of X hundred thousand or million people if it gets us to the promised land?
00:31:22
Speaker
Now, I think you can perhaps see hints of that. I mean, lots of people might say you would see hints of that in the Cromwellian policy in Ireland, where Catholics, Irish Catholics, are seen as the people who are kind of expendable and who are the enemy, who are the virus or whatever, to use the medicalised terminology that so many dictators did in the 20th century.
00:31:42
Speaker
But he doesn't seem to have had that attitude in England itself. The remarkable thing about Hitler, let's say, is that he has that, he applies that attitude very much to his own society and he really thinks there are, you know, he wants, let's smash everything up and kill a lot of people and then we'll have a better, cleaner world. And I think that's often the real, it's people who believe they're doing good, actually, that is often the real kind of threat.
00:32:08
Speaker
Question five. So as context, you've done several really fascinating series on leaders in the 20th century.
20th-Century Effective Leaders
00:32:16
Speaker
You've done France, you've done Australia, which I will recommend to all our listeners, a reverent history of Australian prime ministers, done prime ministers for the UK as well.
00:32:25
Speaker
I was initially going to ask who was the greatest leader of the 20th century, but the word greatest has difficult connotations. So I'm going to ask who was the most effective leader of the 20th century? Oh, that's a good question. Effective for good or ill, Will, or do you not care? I don't care. Okay. So, hmm.
00:32:46
Speaker
The most effective for good, I would say, is probably Franklin D. Roosevelt. It's funny, actually, because Roosevelt, I think, has an outsized influence, but his public persona, at least in Britain, is people know that he was involved in the Second World War. They kind of think of him as Churchill's partner, but they don't know much about him at all. He doesn't have as much popular traction as, let's say, Abraham Lincoln does. And I think Roosevelt is fascinating because Roosevelt does two things very well.
00:33:15
Speaker
He holds American democratic capitalism together through the Great Depression, through the New Deal, a lot of the programs of which don't actually work, but he presents this cheery, inspirational persona that I think was really important, actually, meaning that Americans didn't become radicalized. Their unemployment situation was worse than
00:33:38
Speaker
far worse than, let's say, Britain's or France's, but they didn't veer off to extremes, which a lot of people thought they might in the early 1930s. I think a large part of that was Roosevelt, his fireside chats, his reassuring persona and all that, and the impression of government activism. And then as a war leader in the Second World War and turning the United States into an engaged world superpower at a time when it had been very isolationist,
00:34:00
Speaker
I mean, I think his legacy is American leadership in the Cold War, for example. Without Roosevelt, I don't think you'd get to that point. So I think he's the most effective.
Individuals vs. Institutions in History
00:34:10
Speaker
But of course, the big three, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, the people who have the most impact on the lives of millions, I mean, they're the people who have the most impact on the lives of millions, and they have them for ill. I think it might be Ian Kershaw, the great biographer of Hitler, who wrote in one of his books that actually
00:34:28
Speaker
It tends to be institutions that have influence on society for good. And the greatest influence individuals have is often for evil. So individuals through a great lead, you know, leaders thrive, reach prominence, they have their personality cults in a world in which the institutions and kind of law and order broken down and they can emerge.
00:34:50
Speaker
like Stalin, let's say. Because institutions are constraining. They constrain our worst instincts, which goes to the worldview you expressed earlier. Exactly, exactly, exactly so. Exactly. I have a very kind of Hobbesian view about this, that you need the kind of Leviathan to keep everybody in check. But where single individuals can thrive and rule for decades,
00:35:15
Speaker
That was maybe fine in the 14th century when the state has so little power, and they actually do have very little power over the lives of their subjects. But by the 20th century, where they have tremendous power over the lives of their subjects, if they wish to,
00:35:29
Speaker
You have example after example of people abusing that power and using it for ill, and they are the leaders who actually will be remembered from the 20th century. The democratically elected social Democrat prime minister of Sweden will be forgotten, and Stalin who will live in history. There's a kind of injustice in that, but ultimately Stalin made a bigger difference than all these benign, benevolent, democratically elected leaders like your Australian prime ministers or whatever.
Historical Mistakes & Leadership Exits
00:35:56
Speaker
Yeah, that's interesting. Question six, what historical mistake is most often repeated throughout history? So the classic ones are don't start a land war in Asia and don't invade Russia. I mean, they're the two, certainly don't invade Russia as winter is coming. They are the two classics, aren't they? What historical mistakes? And then the great
00:36:24
Speaker
I mean, there are lots. There's democratically elected prime minister staying in power too long. That happens again and again. People tire of you. Governments become an iron law of democratic politics, isn't it? Governments stay in power too long, they become unresponsive, corrupt, insensitive, they lose sight of public opinion, all of those kinds of things.
00:36:46
Speaker
Can I follow up on that? Can you give me a leader who timed their run perfectly, who actually didn't outstay their welcome and timed the ending well? Oh, I shouldn't have said that now. Yes, that is a good question. A leader who got out and was admired for doing so.
00:37:05
Speaker
I'm trying to think in the Australian context. I'm really struggling in Australia, for example. There aren't many. No, there aren't many at all. So my favourite British Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, when he retired in the 1930s, 1937, I think it was, he was widely admired, celebrated. Then Second World War happened and his reputation was kind of trashed and he was blamed for appeasement.
00:37:30
Speaker
And actually everybody said, oh, what a terrible man Baldwin was. And then when he died, his reputation was that it's an idea. So even if you do get out in time, public opinion then often does turn against you. The most famous example, so my co-presenter from the rest is history would undoubtedly point to somebody like the Emperor Diocletian, who very unusually
00:37:51
Speaker
retired from ruling the Roman Empire and retired to his palace and split, I think to grow cabbages, I think was the claim. So there are examples of people walking away, but often they're unhappy afterwards because if they've been at the peak, I mean, Margaret Thatcher, Margaret Thatcher is a great example of this. She should have retired on her 10th anniversary of being in power in 1989. She stayed, she didn't want to. She was never going to leave, I think, voluntarily.
00:38:17
Speaker
she stayed on too long, she ends up being toppled by her own party, and then the rest of it is kind of sad fade and slightly poisoned by kind of regret and bitterness and all of these kinds of things. I mean, Tony Blair wanted to stay on in Britain and had to be basically kicked out by his own MPs much more kind of decorously than Mrs. Thatcher was, but has since, you know, hung around at a bit of a loose end.
00:38:41
Speaker
I don't really, I mean obviously in the States they have term limits, which is probably actually the best way of doing it, just to say you get two goes and then you're out. Question seven, and this is a favourite question of history nerds since time immemorial.
Alexander the Great's Military Prowess
00:38:56
Speaker
Who was the greatest military general in history?
00:38:58
Speaker
As soon as you said it was a favourite question, well obviously you can't really compare, let's say Julius Caesar and General Patton because the job is so different. But all of that said, who do I find the most glamorous, the most sort of
00:39:19
Speaker
It's exciting to read about the most remarkable there is to my mind. There is only one candidate and that's Alexander the Great So Alexander for people who don't know and if you don't know shame on you If you don't know he leads and go and go pick up my book Adventures in Time on Alexander the great you will thank you. That was beautifully done. I was beautifully done I didn't even prime you so Alexander leads a
00:39:42
Speaker
Macedonian and Greek army over the helispons into asia minor and what's now turkey to fight the persians the great superpower of the day and just keeps on winning and he keeps on winning against the odds and he goes on this absolutely extraordinary. Journey as far as modern day afghanistan as beca stan tajiki stan and down into india.
00:40:04
Speaker
winning battle after battle in very different conditions. By the time he's in India, he's fighting against armies with elephants and things. It's mind-boggling to think where he'd come from and where he got to in an age when the distance must have seemed so overwhelming compared with today.
00:40:22
Speaker
He's leading from the front. He's risking his life in every single battle, fighting incredibly manfully, but also he's got to take charge of all the strategy, all the provisions, all the baggage trains, all of that kind of stuff in an age before paperwork and bureaucrats and things. He's literally an inspirational figure. His speeches, his presence, his very appearance
00:40:51
Speaker
They're all designed to kind of gee up his men before they go into battle. This is a man in his 20s and then early 30s when he died? Exactly, exactly. So he dies at probably the age of 32. Yes, he's
00:41:07
Speaker
He is a remarkable, remarkable figure and he became a template for subsequent so Pompey the Great, Julius Caesar's great rival, had his hair cut like Alexander's, had a cloak that he claimed was Alexander's. People like Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, the reason they keep attacking the Persians is partly because they want to emulate Alexander. Alexander is the model. Even as late as the 16th century, the Spanish conquistadors, when they go to Mexico or to Peru,
00:41:37
Speaker
The example of what Alexander had done, almost two millennia earlier at that point, is very much in their minds. I don't think there's anybody, any military commander who has left such an imprint on the world's imagination. He would be my number one, although of course for any right-thinking Britain,
00:41:58
Speaker
The real hero is always going to be Lord Nelson, but even I would have to admit that Nelson, as tremendous as he was, was not quite as good as Alexander.
00:42:09
Speaker
Well, I had Napoleon, his great foe on my shoulders. Are you putting Nelson above Napoleon? I am, you see, because Nelson dies in the moment of victory. Nelson does what he'd set out to do. Nelson, he wins the Battle of the Nile. Very famously, he wins the Battle of Copenhagen. And then, of course, the Battle of Trafalgar in which he is killed. Napoleon always strikes me the more I think about Napoleon. So we're going to be doing a couple of Restless History episodes about the young Napoleon.
00:42:35
Speaker
just before the film comes out, the Ridley Scott film. Napoleon, now that I think about it, he reminds me, I don't know if you or any of your listeners ever play these kind of strategy board games like Risk, or you play online sort of video games, like there's a game called Europa Universalis, or Hearts of Iron, or any of these games where you kind of conquer the world.
00:42:53
Speaker
Napoleon, if you ever played those, you'll be very familiar with the sort of the player who is winning and winning and winning, extending himself and extending himself. And then suddenly come the great series of crushing defeats as they realize, you know, they basically just embarked on this mad gamble, which was probably always going to come unstuck. That's what Napoleon strikes me as. Of course, Napoleon wins lots of battles. But I think the thing about Napoleon,
00:43:18
Speaker
is that he massively overextends himself. He's guilty of tremendous hubris. The Peninsula War is a disaster when he gets involved in Spain and Portugal. Then obviously the invasion of Russia, which, what is it? They come back with 10% of the men they went with. It has gone down in history as one of the paradigmatic military disasters.
00:43:42
Speaker
And then he loses loads of battles for the next two years or so. He, of course, loses at Waterloo. I think it's Adam Zmoysky, maybe in his book, I can't remember about Napoleon, says, you know, when Napoleon gets to Waterloo, fights Wellington and Blucher, all he can do is the sort of the traditional, you know, up and atom
00:44:03
Speaker
for the glory of France, kind of massive full-on attack. He's stopped thinking and he's run out of other tactics. Actually, even if he had won at Waterloo, I think this is a really interesting point about Napoleon. Imagine he'd won at Waterloo. So what? The rest of Europe is never going to say, oh, fine. Well, okay, you can go back to Orleans, France. They are still going to gang up on him and get rid of him eventually. I think the thing about being a military leader
00:44:29
Speaker
It's a very political job. Any decent military leader, Julius Caesar, the great example, has to be thinking politically the whole time, what are they doing this for? There's no point winning 10 battles if the 11th means it's game over. For Napoleon, I think that the hubris, the massive overextension, sure he wins the Battle of Austerlitz or whatever.
00:44:54
Speaker
Great, well done. But if that's not going to get you to an end point where you can say, fine, I'm done, I've won the game, then what is the point actually? I think that's the issue with Napoleon, that I feel like after the mid 1800s, his defeat was actually, it's all or nothing with him. And I don't think he's ever going to get all because he's never going to be able to knock Russia and Britain out of the contest. And so for that reason, I think the seeds of his defeat are there even at that stage.
00:45:21
Speaker
This also gets me thinking, perhaps Alexander's early death was the single best thing that could have happened for his legacy.
The Kaiser's Disastrous Party
00:45:28
Speaker
Well, that's the funny thing with Alexander. So Alexander dies in Babylon, probably of some kind of malaria, but possibly poisoned, but most likely, I think, from illness. But he dies at a point where he's clearly planning yet another campaign. Because all Alexander, you see, this saves Alexander from turning into Napoleon.
00:45:45
Speaker
Because actually all Alexander really knows how to do and all he wants to do is to keep fighting people. And the point, you know, it's hard to imagine a scenario where Alexander settles down and says, brilliant, for the next 20 years, I shall devote my attention to bridge building, you know, supervising tax collection schemes, you know, dispensing justice, whatever. Some monarchs from antiquity are brilliant at doing that. Augustus.
00:46:12
Speaker
Augustus was great at doing that. The great politician in Western history, the man who basically invents the Roman Empire. Augustus was, in a weird way, much less glamorous, but much more consequential than Alexander.
00:46:27
Speaker
It's Alexander who seizes our imagination, but by dying, because had he gone on, lived another 20 years, that had been some kind of terrible disaster, I suspect he might have attacked, might have tried to go into Arabia, and given he'd already had a very shambolic performance in the desert, in Balochistan, in Persia, in Iran and Pakistan, on his way back from his great expedition. I think an Arabian expedition would probably have been a bit of a disaster.
00:47:02
Speaker
Question eight, what was the most disastrous party in history? So we did a Restless History episode on the top 10 disastrous parties. I mean, a slightly cheap answer would be to say the most disastrous party was the British Liberal Democrats. However, I would say the Kaiser has this party, and I think it's about 1908 or so. The listeners will have to forgive me for not remembering the exact date.
00:47:19
Speaker
And, you know, he tarnished his own legacy. So actually it was the best thing for him.
00:47:29
Speaker
He has this party, this get-together of his top generals and sort of cronies and hunting pals, and they all gather in this hunting lodge. And the weird thing about this is Edwardian sort of Europe was obsessed with homosexuality, with fears of homosexuality and kind of
00:47:49
Speaker
allegations about, you know, that there were kind of sort of gay rings in high places. It's very kind of post the trial of Oscar Wilde, which had really cemented this kind of idea in Britain. And one of the Kaiser's confidants, a guy called von Ullenberg,
00:48:07
Speaker
he had been outed effectively. And this was very controversial for the Kaiser. He was feeling very bruised. There'd been lots of sort of rumors in the newspapers and things. So he and his mates will get together to try and sort of drown their sorrows a bit. It's like an away day. It's like a corporate away day.
00:48:21
Speaker
And they're there, and they've had a great day hunting, you know, charging around with their enormous moustaches, kind of shooting gazillions of birds. And they're back there at the hunting lodge. And as part of the entertainment, his friend, Dietrich Graf von Hulzenheisler, his name is crazy name, crazy guy. And he looks like, if you Google him, he looks like the absolute stereotype of a Prussian general. He looks like he's made from oak.
00:48:50
Speaker
He's about 20 feet tall, incredibly wide, gigantic moustache, utterly unsmiling. He goes out and then he comes back in dressed in a ballerina's pink tutu. And then he does this thing where he does a kind of routine of pirouetting and kind of dancing and all this stuff.
00:49:10
Speaker
And in mid to twirls and things, and in mid pirouette, he has a heart attack and drops dead. And this is obviously incredibly bad news for him, but very embarrassing for the guys. And they try to, when the doctors come, he can't be revived. They try to get him out of his tutu, but by that point, rigor mortis has set in.
00:49:31
Speaker
So they have to, it's a terrible battle to get it because obviously you can't be buried in a ballerina's outfit and they cover it up. You know, they say, oh, it's a very sad thing, but eventually the story gets out. And it just seems such a weird, inexplicable, it's never been explained what he was thinking. Was the Kaiser in on it? Did the Kaiser think this was funny? Anyway, so that would probably be my number one. That's my favorite.
00:49:54
Speaker
Yep. Boys will be boys, I suppose. I guess so. I mean, we've all been there on a stag deal or something. That's right. Question nine.
Future Reflections on Britain
00:50:03
Speaker
It's 2050. Much loved octogenarian historian, Dominic Sandbrook is sitting down to write his next instalment in his series of books on the history of modern Britain. The next book is on Britain in 2020 to 2023. What will that story look like? 2020 to 2023.
00:50:21
Speaker
Well, I probably never will get that far. I've only got to 1982. I'm really going more and more slowly. I think there have been two punctuation points in 21st century British history. One, which I think is almost undervalued now, is the financial crisis. The financial crisis was
00:50:43
Speaker
It completely transforms British politics and we still live in its shadow. There has been, you know, effectively no money. So what Britain has done, it's done by borrowing. I mean, we borrowed enormously for COVID. We borrowed enormously again for during the sort of energy crisis of the last couple of years, basically to pay people's energy bills. And I think that means that, you know, in complete contrast with the Blair years, everything since then
00:51:12
Speaker
has been governments fighting this desperate kind of rearguard action and not really being honest with the public. And there's been enormous social tensions because of that and actually politics in Britain has become divided generationally. So what happened in 2020 to 2023 is merely the latest chapter of that story.
00:51:29
Speaker
The other thing that it's obviously a chapter of is the Brexit story. Brexit scrambled British politics in 2016. Ever since, you have the Theresa May period and then effectively the Boris Johnson period, which would be 2019 to 2023. Well, 2022, but then you had Truss, which is a kind of post Boris thing. I'm guessing that Rishi Sunak will probably
00:51:52
Speaker
turn out to be another relatively short-lived prime minister, unless the polls are completely wrong, which seems unlikely. So the story of Britain in the early 2020s is actually a
00:52:05
Speaker
It reminds me a little bit of the story about Britain in the late 70s or in the mid-1990s. It's the kind of end of a regime, a country that probably feels a bit down in the dumps, a bit miserable, a bit conflicted. The funny thing is, of course, so I found this when writing my own, the histories that do exist of the 50s, 60s, and 70s. At any given point, most people don't judge their lives by politics.
00:52:32
Speaker
So, and we all know this from our own lives that people ask you about what you were doing in the 2000s or in 2015 or in the 1990s or whatever. People reach for personal things. They say, oh, that was a brilliant year. I met my wife. I had my first child. We went on holiday. I was at school, whatever. They don't think politically. So the challenge in writing the history is to capture the texture of everyday experience, which life went on.
00:52:55
Speaker
and actually most of the apocalyptic predictions never came out to be, turned out to be right, with the kind of chaotic scenes in Westminster. And I don't think, I think it is fair to say that in my lifetime, we've never had a more chaotic, often fairly risible carry-on in Westminster as we have in the last couple of years. So that 2022, I mean, that will be a gift to a historian. You'd want a historian with a good sense of humour,
00:53:23
Speaker
Because there's so much comedy there in the fall of Boris, the business with him having his parties, and was he ambushed by a cake and all these kind of things, which would just seem so weird to people writing about them in the far future.
00:53:36
Speaker
then the trust interlude, all of that sort of stuff. I mean, I think actually the way to treat it is as a bit of a black comedy. But actually, deep down, we in Britain love... I know it's weird that people in Australia think we're so arrogant because that's just completely wrong. The truth of the matter is that people in Britain love... I mean, my wife, who is Irish, said to me, the thing that I can never get about you in Britain is I never knew such a people for whinging about their own country.
00:54:03
Speaker
I think we love to pretend that Britain is worse than it is actually, because actually it's in some ways, it has problems of course, but I mean all Western countries do, particularly all European countries. In the United States, God knows it's got its fair share of problems. I would like to think that looking back and writing the history of the 2020s, the early 2020s, you could conclude by saying,
00:54:29
Speaker
for all the doom and gloom, you know, Britain was still fine. I mean, what I fear is, you know, someone would be writing that story and they would say, this was merely the beginning of the slide or whatever. But I'm quite an optimistic person, even though I have a very bleak view of human nature. And I think, you know, your neighbors will probably try to kill and eat you. But I think I am quite an optimistic and I feel I don't feel bad about about Britain and its kind of place in the world. I also suspect, by the way, that Britain will end up
00:54:58
Speaker
I don't think Brexit will be reversed, but I think Britain will end up in relative convergence with Europe just because of the force of economic gravity. I remember saying this to people in 2016.
00:55:14
Speaker
saying with the Brexit referendum, I said, I think ultimately we'll probably end up in a similar position, whatever happens. And they were like, oh no, that's a terrible thing to say, whether they were leavers or remainers, you see, because they were both equally passionate. This is absolutely a heresy and madness. But I kind of thought, in the long run, so many things in history are inevitable. So I actually suspect that
00:55:38
Speaker
maybe that's why a historian will be able to treat the stuff in the 2020s as a comedy because they'll be able to say in the long run it was always all going to work out as it always would have done.
00:55:51
Speaker
And the trust stuff and Boris and all that business was surface froth, as it were. And the underlying kind of tectonic plates of history were unchanged. Fascinating. We are almost at time, but I can squeeze in the 10th and final
Future of 'The Rest is History' Podcast
00:56:07
Speaker
question. It's actually not from me. It is from a friend of Australiana, Tom Holland. Oh. Tom has asked.
00:56:14
Speaker
When are we going to do the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth episode? Tom never would have asked that question because he doesn't even want to do it himself. I bought a book about the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but then I discovered it was full of bishops. There's a hell of a lot of bishops, which is a real gift to Tom, and therefore that put me off. However, I would love to do the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
00:56:37
Speaker
For your listeners who don't know, and why would they, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was one of Europe's largest ever states. I mean, it was massive. It's vanished from our collective memory, but it contained Poland. I mean, Lithuania was a big place. Belarus, what is now kind of western central Ukraine.
00:56:56
Speaker
It was a superpower. It was a European kind of continental superpower and a great renaissance sort of civilization society going through to the Enlightenment. So interesting.
00:57:10
Speaker
We absolutely will do it. The answer to Tom is Tom will probably do it instead of your projected episodes about popes or some of the episodes that you're constantly texting me about, about suggesting that we do more saints. I will swap the popes and the saints for the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but what I will not sacrifice is the Mexican Revolution because I am very keen on doing that.
00:57:31
Speaker
and of course more Australian history. So we are gearing up. That's what the people want. Since Tom has annoyed me by putting that question, I will say this. We wanted to do some Australian history. I said, let's go from the
00:57:46
Speaker
Let's go with the first big hitter that most of our non-Australian listeners will recognize, which is Captain Cook. Let's start and do Captain Cook, and then we can move forward and we can do Botany Bay and all that business. Afterwards, Tom was very jittery about that will. He's actually terrified of being cancelled. Tom is a lily livered man. Tom was like, oh no, Captain Cook. I said, listen,
00:58:08
Speaker
Blame it all on me, all the abuse you get, direct it to me, I'll deal with it. I've written for the Daily Mail for 15 years, so I'm very used to letters in green ink. So we'll have some episodes about Captain Cook coming just before we come to Australia, which of course we're really looking forward to. And when is that?
00:58:24
Speaker
So we are coming in November. We are doing... Well, we're going to... I hate to say this, but since you're listening to our stream, but we're actually going to New Zealand first. So we're going to Auckland, and then we are coming to Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth, and we're doing live shows in each one where we'll be talking about all kinds of historical topics and people get to
00:58:47
Speaker
ask us questions so they get to basically ask whatever question we have to answer without preparation a bit like this so it should be really really good fun.
00:58:56
Speaker
That is the precise itinerary for an Ash's tour and I'm sure you guys will be more successful than English cricket teams. Come on. The sledging begins. Donny, those shows will no doubt sell out. You are incredibly popular in Australia now as you are everywhere. This has been an absolute pleasure for me. I will echo what I said at the start of the podcast in that it is something which is quite rare that actually, or a piece of content that is quite rare that has a real impact on your life and
00:59:24
Speaker
I can say for me, this is the work that you've done with Tom has in love and that love of history and I speak to so many people who would say the same thing. It's quite special what you guys have achieved and I would politely request that you keep doing it for some time. Thank you. Well, that's really lovely to hear. That's really kind of you. Thank you. It's been really fun talking to you and I promise we will keep going. Don't worry.
00:59:47
Speaker
Thank you very much for listening to this episode of Australiana. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating and a review. And if you really enjoyed the show, head to spectator.com.au forward slash join. Sign up for a digital subscription today and you'll get your first month absolutely free.