Up in Ontario

Stephen Fry on the matter of history

I love speeches from great orators. I can read them over again and get new meaning from them. To follow along and imagine the pacing, inflection and manner of delivery and to join in company with a fine mind is a joy. Speeches are read slower, with a different cadence, than prose, and I love to tease out the fine details that the words on the page or the screen hint at.

Cleaning out some old bookmarks today I came across a speech delivered by historian Stephen Fry entitled The future's in the past. The speech was delivered last summer to promote the launch of a British campaign to make history relevant to its population.

But ... isn't history now just point of view, tribal assertion, cultural propaganda? After all, the days of Burke, Macaulay, Gibbon, Trevelyan and Froude are over. Historians are no longer grandees at the centre of a fixed civilisation; they are simply journalists writing about celebrities who haven't got the grace to be alive any more. Certainly, some people sense in our world, even if they can't prove it, a new and bewildering contempt for the past. In the high street of life, as it were, no one seems to look above the shop-line. Today's plastic signage at street level is the focus; yesterday's pilasters, corbels and pediments above are neither noticed nor considered, save by what some would call cranks and conservationists.