Boos and hurrahs

The problem about contemporary history is that we know both too little about it and too much. The archives of the state are closed to the public for 30 years, leaving us dependent on those famous sources of myth and misinformation, political diarists, memoir writers and journalists. At the bottom end, a history of our own age can so easily turn out to be nothing more than a million newspaper cuttings placed end to end. But would we be better off if we knew everything? I doubt it. It is difficult for an author to think dispassionately about times which he has lived through, and no easier for his readers. Selection is everything, and virtually bound to be tendentious. Contemporary history dates badly.

Andrew Marr’s history of Britain since the second world war is the book of the film. I have no idea what the television series was like. But the book is an exceptionally skilful venture in the higher journalism.