06-10-2010, 09:00 AM
Neither Terry Deary nor Niall Ferguson has covered himself with glory in this online spat: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article7140660.ece.
Deary commits the cardinal sin of an ad hominem attack on Ferguson (“Obnoxious people like Niall Ferguson write a book to prove that the British Empire was a good thing. He’s a deeply offensive right-wing man who uses history to get across a political point” ), while Ferguson responds in an elitist, condescending manner that can only cast historians further into suspicion (“It’s a little like asking Rory Bremner for his opinion on George Osborne’s spending cuts or Sacha Baron Cohen to review Simon Schama’s forthcoming history of the Jews. I have read some of the Horrible Histories to my children. They’re quite funny. And so is this” ).
Sadly, Ferguson is not alone. Tudor specialist David Starkey furthers his already pompous image by coming out in support of Ferguson and criticising Deary's Horrible Histories children's books (“Does this man go to the archive, or is he just a parasite on historians?”). In the whole piece, only Catharine Edwards displays the correct (imho) attitude (“If it takes toilets [as in the Horrible Histories books] to get [children] interested in history, that’s fine") -- I like to think that she's the sensible one because she's an ancient historian! :wink:
Deary commits the cardinal sin of an ad hominem attack on Ferguson (“Obnoxious people like Niall Ferguson write a book to prove that the British Empire was a good thing. He’s a deeply offensive right-wing man who uses history to get across a political point” ), while Ferguson responds in an elitist, condescending manner that can only cast historians further into suspicion (“It’s a little like asking Rory Bremner for his opinion on George Osborne’s spending cuts or Sacha Baron Cohen to review Simon Schama’s forthcoming history of the Jews. I have read some of the Horrible Histories to my children. They’re quite funny. And so is this” ).
Sadly, Ferguson is not alone. Tudor specialist David Starkey furthers his already pompous image by coming out in support of Ferguson and criticising Deary's Horrible Histories children's books (“Does this man go to the archive, or is he just a parasite on historians?”). In the whole piece, only Catharine Edwards displays the correct (imho) attitude (“If it takes toilets [as in the Horrible Histories books] to get [children] interested in history, that’s fine") -- I like to think that she's the sensible one because she's an ancient historian! :wink:
hock:
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