At least twenty years ago I found I was using my small television as an unplugged, sofa-side coffee table and paying for a TV licence. More recently I found I can watch television using an iPad (and I have a TV licence again).
A few days ago I bought the smallest TV I could find: 24 inch, flat screen, colour. It is as unobtrusive as such a big black rectangle can be. When I read reviews of recommended TV programmes they are mostly hidden behind a pay wall, so I tried the most popular BBC TV shows: Race Across the World and Traitors. RAtW was promising because the episode I saw was partially set in the Yucátan Peninsula and Belize, both much changed from my visit in 1973. It has won a BAFTA and has had more than seven million viewers. Traitors has clocked up twelve million. They are LCD TV. I found both shows meaningless.
In search of something more HCF I found Empire with David Olusoga, an historian I had never heard of until I watched Celebrity Traitors. But I haven’t seen it yet because I was seduced by another TV historian, Lucy Worsley, and her series, Empire of the Tsars. It is about the Romanov (Lucy pronounces it differently to me and I’m sure she is right) dynasty which ruled Russia for more than three hundred years (304). Lucy omitted to mention that the Plantagenets held sway here for 331 years. I have been to Moscow, St Petersburg and Poltava and found her potted history most enjoyable. I will watch “faithful” David Olusoga later.
If you think history belongs closer to home and not on a TV screen the Pax Britannica trilogy by Jan Morris is for you, by Jingo!
I enjoyed the video until Messrs Johnson and Farage appeared. What have they to do with it? They are not noteworthy for wishing to preserve our liberty.
Try Empireland and Empireworld by Satnam Sanghera and you might feel differently about James Morris!