The Historians Who've Had Enough of Woke History - Nigel Biggar and Robert Tombs

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**Robert Tombs** (0:58)
He wanted to look at some documents. He was told that they were no longer available because they concerned 19th century descriptions of indigenous cultures, which were not to be seen by the prying eyes of 21st century Westerners. This might upset the spirits of the ancestors.

**Nigel Biggar** (1:17)
My worry is that the currently fashionable story about Britain's past being a litany of racism and oppression and exploitation is being fed to kids.
Why would you believe in the country? Would you fight for Britain? No, I wouldn't fight for it. The story we tell ourselves about our past has really important political implications.

**Konstantin Kisin** (1:37)
And that's why it's being done. Let's be honest.
Many of you have commented that you are seeing too many ads in our videos. We've listened to your feedback and disabled YouTube ads in the middle of our interviews. Can we ask you a favor in return? According to our analytics, most of you who watch our show are not subscribed to the channel. Please help us to continue bringing you fantastic content by subscribing today, hitting that like button and leaving a comment with your thoughts on this video. Robert Tombs, Nigel Biggar. What a pleasure to have you both on the show together. Two of the most eminent historians in this country. We wanted to talk about many different things. But the first one is history itself.
And the way it's being told is something you've covered in a recent book. Remind everybody the title.

**Nigel Biggar** (2:27)
The, well, Colonialism and Moral Reckoning would be the earliest one. And then the latest one on the culture wars is The New Dark Age. Yes.
Why liberals must win the culture wars. And then the next one with Robert is our island story, A Better Story About Britain.

**Konstantin Kisin** (2:46)
That's right. And we will cover actually all of that. We had you on to talk about the first of those books a couple of years back now.

**Nigel Biggar** (2:54)
I can't keep forgetting which was my last book.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:56)
That's right. That's why I was like, why is he looking so puzzled about the title of his book?

**Konstantin Kisin** (3:00)
But one of the things you talk about is the way that history is being taught and more importantly, not taught. And we wanted to hear both of your thoughts about the way people now are taught to understand the history of not just our society, not just of our country, but actually of our species.

**Nigel Biggar** (3:19)
So I think there are two problems. And Robert can contradict me if he wants. One problem is when I went to school a long time ago in the 60s and 70s, I came up with a sense of the development of Britain from the Roman times to the present. I had a sense of the whole and of how we got to where we are. And it was a Whiggyish story of development and increasing liberal politics, but it was a good story.
My sense is now that kids in primary, secondary school, they don't get the whole story. They get blobs. What would it like to be in the trenches in the First World War? What was it like to be a slave?
Lots about the Nazis, but no coherent sense of the whole story of the country. So that 10 years ago, a young man who came from one of our best private schools, and was thinking about wanting to read history in Oxford, we had a conversation until I heard the sound of my jaw hitting the floor, when I realized this intelligent, well-educated young man did not know when the English Civil War happened, because he had no sense of the whole. So that's one problem, I think, and that's one problem I want our book to address or remedy. And the other is my worry, and I'm sure it varies from school to school. My worry is that the currently fashionable story about Britain's past as being a litany of racism and oppression and exploitation is being fed to kids. I'm sure it would happen in every school, but I'm sure in some schools it will be the case. So it's not just a matter of giving them the whole story of the development of the country, but feeding them a particularly ideologically partisan story. That really worries me.