Dan Snow is the ultimate midwit historian

Dan Snow, the TV historian, is anxious about his ‘privilege’. One of many ‘nepo babies’ in the British media, Snow’s debut came when he was 23 years old, fresh out of Oxford, co-presenting with his father Peter. Having benefited from his well-heeled upbringing, Snow now excitedly foresees the end of ‘inherited monarchy’ and ‘organised religion’. In an interview with the Times, Snow makes a confession:

‘Yes, I myself am a privileged white guy who went to Oxford and read history. Once upon a time the world was made for English-speaking white guys like me — the challenge is how I act now.’

Snow appears to express disappointment that Prince Harry, in Spare, didn’t try hard enough to expose the monarchy as ‘racist’ and ‘dangerous to those within it as well as its subjects’. His wife, the Lady Edwina, was Princess Diana’s goddaughter. Is he trying to compensate for something?

Intoning the usual liturgy about how we must ‘find our place in history’ (‘No one is blaming you for the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade,’ he says), Snow swerves randomly into musing about the Second World War:

‘You can love your country but also be aware that the story is not as simple as the Battle of Britain pilots were defending freedom; they were defending a British imperial system from an ambitious German imperial system’.