BIG INTERVIEW: Dan Snow's personal HIStory of life

In modern terms Dan Snow is doing the same for history as Brian Cox has done for science.

Dan has stormed to the front of historical queue thanks to programmes like Battlefield Britain, Hadrian, How the Celts Saved Britain, Dig WW2 with Dan Snow, The Dambusters: 70 Years On, Armada: 12 Days to Save England and Dan Snow on Lloyd George: My Great-GreatGrandfather.

You can find out more about Dan and his television career and programmes when he comes to The Octagon Theatre in Yeovil on June 27 with Dan Snow – An Evening With The ‘History Guy’ On The History Hit UK Tour 2018.

Among the programmes he will talk about is the time he fired a Browning machine gun which had been found in a bog in the Irish Republic.

The 1941 Spitfire crash remained remarkably preserved chunks of plane and six Browning machine guns and the aim was to see if they could get the guns working again.

There is a song History Repeating by the Propellerheads and featuring Dame Shirley Bassey.

One of its verses goes: “There is fashion, there is fad, Some is good, some is bad “And the joke rather sad, That it’s all just a little bit of History repeating....”

I asked Dan why he thought why generations never learn the lessons from history?

Dan said: “I do think people learn from history. We have built a civilization and we have learnt how to create a liberal democracy, we have flown by balloon, the fixed winged aeroplane and sent men to the moon.

“I am more optimistic and think we have learnt. War and conflict are part of human nature but we are trying to rectify this but this is human history.

“We have to treat history as way of learning from experience.

“We should not make the mistake to elect narcissistic silly people.

“It is a mistake to demonise other ethnic religious groups, a mistake to fail to educate young people, it is mistake to believe fake news and a mistake to fan the flames of nationalism.”

As a presenter and historian, one of Dan’s roles is to make sure history is brought alive on the screen and not seen as dead on the page.

Explaining how this needs to be achieved he said: “I think History is well placed to do this as it has the best locations, the best objects and allows you to look at the archives.

“You can see beautiful buildings such as Stonehenge, castles temples in India or the Monsoon Palace in the city of Udaipur, Rajasthan in India.

“In the West Country you benefit from medieval towns.

“If a builder form the C13th century could see a medieval church still standing today I think he would be surprised as it was still here thousands of years later.”

But what of the world today?

How does Dan think future generations will look at the first half of the C21st?

He said: “I think we are living in the time of a terrible conflict, a power conflict.

"This period will be looked at as remarkable time. The big IF we survive this conflict such as global warming.

Maybe we are drinking at the last chance saloon and future generations will scream at what we have done.

“It is not like a Cold War where one side was trying to destroy an ideology and an economy.

"What we have now is acting and posturing.

"It is the same for Britain whose post Imperial past is declining, there is Brexit and Britain is still coming to terms with the fact it is not the most powerful nation.

“We are defined by our defeats.

"I know I think about my defeats and my failures.”

I asked Dan if he thought some historical mysteries should be left unsolved or do we need to know everything?

He said: “I want to know everything. I want to know where Genghis Khan is buried, How Edward II died, who did Edward the Confessor promise the throne to? and what did Nelson say to the Duke of Wellington when they met for the only time and had a private conversation for 20 minutes?”

Tickets for an Audience with Dan Snow cost £26.

You can buy these online at octagon-theatre.co.uk or call the box office on 01935 422884.