This is not really linked to WW1, but it definitely relates to History. As the General Election approaches the media is sending its brave hacks to some pretty way-out places - and today Marina Hyde reports on the time she spent at a meeting with Ukip:
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/2015/apr/23/ukip-st-georges-day-bank-holiday-flags
The whole article paints a nightmare picture of Ukip’s vision for this country, but it was the following that made me flinch most:
"...let’s while away the hours listening to Ukip’s culture spokesman, Peter Whittle, who shared a platform with O’Flynn this morning and advanced policies that sounded as though they were dreamed up by some Rotarian dullard shortly after falling off his attic ladder. For instance: all history will be taught only chronologically, because “values … emerge through learning these things in chronological order”.
I'm still trying to work out when Ukip's view of history begins. 1066 - with the conquest of the Anglo-Saxons by upstart Normans? Or in 1688 - when a Dutch protestant booted out the last of the Scottish Stuarts, who happened to be a Catholic? 1918 - when the UK (with a little help from its friends) defeater the Germany of the Kaiser? On reflection it will probably start in the Summer of 1940 when Churchill became PM.
The quote in the title seems to sum up this Little Englander view of history - and inevitably it comes from The History Boys.
