The BBC is failing impartiality with its history documentaries

A good history book generates in the mind of its readers a series of visual images of people, places and events, blurry and perhaps not very accurate, but nevertheless the sort of thing that can be held in the memory. Television history challenges this because it provides ready-made versions of many of the visuals, and they too can become locked in one’s memory of historical events. Put differently, television takes over from individual imagination in portraying the past, and that is a particular problem for documentaries that do not admit to spicing up the past, as a costume drama will inevitably do. Rather, documentaries claim to uncover the truth. And if the details are wrong, well, that is because there is a higher truth than accuracy, in the eyes of devotees of so-called critical race theory. 

It is therefore very worrying that a report by History Reclaimed, brilliantly researched by Alexander Gray, has brought to light serious problems in recent BBC history documentaries.