Coal House's Success Was to Switch Children On to Our History ; in the Latest Part of Our Snapshot of a Nation Mini-Series, Veteran Screenwriter and Western Mail Columnist Elaine Morgan Discusses the Sometimes Turbulent Relationship Between History and Television Over the 20th Century

Western Mail › October 14, 2010

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Summary

WHEN I was first taught history in primary school I thought it was even more boring than arithmetic. It was all about kings, and full of unpleasant things like battles and plagues and dates.

The few instances intended as light relief, like King Alfred burning the cakes, weren't much of a laugh as far as I could see. Of course it was all about men. Only three women cropped up in our history lessons - Queen Elizabeth who was called Good Queen Bess but cut people's heads off, Joan of Arc who was brave and talked to God but we burned her alive, and Grace Darling, who was all the rage in those days but seems to have gone out of fashion since then.

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Coal House's Success Was to Switch Children On to Our History ; in the Latest Part of Our Snapshot of a Nation Mini-Series, Veteran Screenwriter and Western Mail Columnist Elaine Morgan Discusses the Sometimes Turbulent Relationship Between History and Television Over the 20th Century

Also, it was all about the English. Welsh history hardly featured at all in the 1920s. All I can remember being told about it was that Saint David stood on a handkerchief so that people could hear him better, and some English king dangled his baby son out of a window and said: "Here, you can call this the Prince of Wales if that'll keep you quiet." Neither of these incidents made much sense to me.

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