Earlier this month I wrote about leaders in war, beginning with Henry V and the Battle of Agincourt.
My depiction of events was a patriotic account of plucky England crushing France. Come to think of it, it might be called the Bryant Version, after the eponymous historian described by Andrew Roberts as “ a supreme toady, fraudulent scholar and humbug”. It is the orthodox version but sure as eggs orthodox history is the forerunner of revisionist history.
”Historians generally believe that the Battle of Agincourt was an engagement in which the English army, overwhelmingly outnumbered four to one by the French army, pulled off a stunning victory. This understanding was especially popularised by Shakespeare’s play Henry V. However, recent research by Professor Anne Curry, using the original enrollment records, has brought into question this interpretation. Though her research is not finished, she has published her initial findings that the French outnumbered the English and the Welsh only by 12,000 to 8,000. If true, the numbers may have been exaggerated for patriotic reasons by the English.” (Wikipedia)
Tony Barber wrote about Russian revisionism in FTWeekend in August last year. It prompted an excellent letter – I should know, I wrote it. “Tony Barber’s thoughtful article (“Russia gives an updated lesson in distorting history”, Opinion, FT Weekend, August 12) about Vladimir Putin’s rewriting of Russian history reminds me of a visit I made to Kyrgyzstan. Our guide was an economics graduate; I asked him what if anything he had been taught at school about the UK. He looked embarrassed before saying he only knew we had joined both world wars at the end, when we knew we would be on the winning side.”
Most historical revisionism reflects new sources as well as reversing some moral judgements today considered untenable. Of course opinions may change tomorrow or in different parts of the world. Some revisionists go too far, like holocaust denier, David Irving. In 2019 my post The Holodomor describes two views of the famine in Ukraine under Stalin. Now I am reading an excellent book by a revisionist historian. I am finding it of great interest, stimulating the little grey cells as Poirot was fond of saying. My author “has come under criticism, with some scholars calling his work “deeply flawed” and “dreadful” … (and) has been said to have a “contempt for history”. “ (Wikipedia)
I will return to this fascinating subject when I have finished the book.
Talking of revisionist historians, a few weeks ago visited a bookshop, Kenny’s in Galway (5*), and asked the earnest assistant what book he suggested I should read to get an understanding of the Great Famine, expecting a similarly earnest Marxist critique. To my surprise he told me that nothing had beaten Cecil Woodham-Smith’s account published in 1962. I had her down as an upmarket Arthur Bryant. I hadn’t realised she was a Fitzgerald so was not expecting the first paragraph to include
“The country had been conquered not once but several times, the land had been confiscated and redistributed over and over again, the population had been brought to the verge of extinction-after Cromwell’s conquest and settlement only some half million Irish survived yet an Irish nation still existed, separate, numerous and hostile.¹”
Bravo St Hilda’s Oxford.
Thank you for your debut as a comment writer – keep them coming, Eoin.
There is, of course, Churchill’s candid observation that ‘ history is written by the victors’. How true!