This issue of Keeping Up I talk candidly with Post Editor Skankyrich:

Well, having blagged our honourable Editor into the hot-seat I feel it's my duty, nay my responsibility to the community, to ask you the demanding questions.

So, boxers or briefs?

I still remember the first pair of boxers I ever owned. I was about 13, and my Mum took me to C&A to buy a pair. They were white with coloured squares and triangles all over, and were rather natty. It turned out that my Mum had bought them with the idea that I could wear them round the pool while on holiday, and everyone knows white pants and water don't mix. I spent most of the holiday in trousers. Even so, I've never bought briefs since.

Is this the sort of historical answer you're looking for?

Well, now we have a frame of reference - kind of. When you were 13, what interested you most, apart from see-through underwear? I'm hoping this was when your interest in things historical starting, or perhaps it was earlier, or later? Where does the passion for old bits and bobs come from in your life?

It was the time when I actually got completely and utterly bored with history. At school, we weren't taught history with any thought of enthusing us about it. We'd be given a bit of Nazi propaganda from World War Two and be asked to write an essay about whether we thought it was biased or not, for example. Exercises like that always felt pretty patronising, and seemed like little more than long-winded ways of stating the obvious. Of course, it serves a purpose - it's a good age to start challenging ideas and learning not to take everything at face value - and the skills you learn that way are a good grounding for being a historian. The point they seemed to miss at school was that you also need to be interested in history! So I muddled through and got a rather bored grade 'C', and decided to leave it there and study more interesting subjects instead.

On the white-panted holiday I mentioned earlier, I did something that I'm still very proud of. I wrote my own guidebook to Mallorca. I got a little A6 notebook and traced a map of the island from a postcard, and then wrote a couple of pages about each place we visited. We'd go somewhere like the fantastic Gothic cathedral in Palma, and I'd pore over the guidebooks and leaflets in the evening (even then I knew that Berlitz guides are rubbish). You can't help but be awestruck at the story of somewhere like that. For a start, it took 400 years or so to build, and that starts to invite questions. Why did it take so long to build? Well, it had to be grander than the Muslim mosque and palace next door. So there were Muslims? How did they get there? And how did the Christians conquer the place? So you get interested about that, and find out about the Reconquista, and the whole story starts to fall into place. And that explains the legend which tells of King Jaime being guided to the island in a storm by the Virgin Mary, because the extra significance that gives to the building of the cathedral would really have pushed home the idea that God was on the Christians' side. Without all this, it's just a large, attractive building, but when you begin to explore the story of the place it becomes utterly fascinating. When I got home, I carried on, if a bit less excitedly; I'd try to find out why all those stone circles and rows were on Dartmoor, things like that.

You'll notice that I didn't use the word 'history' there. I wasn't learning about history in my mind at all, because history meant balancing evidence and working out whether a source was reliable or not. It had nothing to do with the rise and fall of civilisations, myths and legends or even just making sense of anything you're looking at. As far as I was concerned, I was just putting bits of stories together to explain a bit about Mallorca. It was a long time before I discovered that what I was doing was researching histories of places.

It was a great learning experience for me, because when I realised that this was what history is all about it stopped being a dirty word. Now I think that history explains the human world in the same way that science explains the natural world. If you need to understand anything about people - religion, politics, culture - the best starting point is almost always to examine the history.

I think that's what drew me from Australia to England, is the depth of history that can be felt about people, not disparaging the amazing amount of history the native peoples of Australia have, but the amazing intertwining of cultures and beliefs throughout the British Isles always seemed to me an incredible feat of humanity (and continues to be). Having said that, do you yourself have a favourite place of historical interest, somewhere you just can soak up the ambience of past times?

Without a moment's thought, it would be the Alhambra in Granada. There are plenty of places that move me for all sorts of reasons, but it's the only place where it all comes together for me. You've got this astonishing clash of civilisations; the Muslims created all these extraordinary buildings out of wood and plaster, and then the Christians took it over and built their own uniquely pompous monuments - it sounds like I'm being rude about the Christians there, but they wanted to show their strength and power and God-given right to lord it over everyone, and I think the pompousness was intentional. There's also all this half-legendary folklore surrounding the place, massacres and mistresses, and you can still walk around and get a feel for it all. I can't imagine anywhere it could be more tangible. And the setting of the place, high above a gorge, overlooking mountains one side and sweeping plains on the other, demands reflection. I've travelled a lot and seen both Machu Picchu and the Taj Mahal at sunrise, but we simply don't have the superlatives to describe the Alhambra.

So, big impressive places and things. Oh, you're such a typical man. *wink* Is there not anything a little bit smaller you'd like to get your hands on, something to pop up on the mantelpiece and show off to visitors? An original Gutenberg Bible, a piece of Sputnik, or the like?

You're going to start to think that I'm only interested in one era of history, in one country, and possibly in just one city now.

There's an archaeological museum in Granada that's full of interesting oddities. You can see some really fascinating stuff there; sandals from prehistoric Spanish caves Roman memorabilia, all sorts. The one object I remember more clearly than any was a kind of a globe surrounded by lots of intricate, perfectly measured and scored wheels to plot the movements of the stars precisely. It's an astrolabe dating from the late-middle years of the Moorish occupation, and it's an absolute work of art. It's astonishingly beautiful, perfectly engineered and put the Moors scientifically a couple of centuries ahead of the rest of Europe. I wouldn't keep it my mantelpiece, though; I'd try to work out how to use it and show my friends just how clever people were back then.

Failing that, I'd get the artists of Altimira to come and redecorate my lounge.

Ah, see, I'd just get someone to come and clean the lounge before thinking of redecorating. I find the objects of the past amazingly beautiful, and I often think, are future historians going to dig up a PlayStation, mobile phone or a dishwasher in years to come and think the workmanship and design is just as awe-inspiring as a sennet game, Celtic bronze mirror or Edwardian writing desk are to us today.

Let's move on to my next question though, which has come to be a regular one. Let's just say you've found a time machine, and you can travel back to any period of history (and any country) where would you go to? But the catch is you can't come back to the present day, you have to live out the rest of your life in that time period.

That's a really tricky one. I'd like to say that I'd go back and live under one of the bonkers Carthaginian kings of Spain, be around for all the political intrigue when Spain was being assembled from a load of small states, or hang around the court of one of the better Moorish rulers. Ultimately, though, I don't think I'd be able to handle the rickets. So I'm going to say that I'd choose to go back to the much more recent past and hang around 1950s America with the Beats. I think I'd handle all the hitchhiking and meditating up on mountaintops pretty well, and I could drink in those old smoky jazz bars for an eternity. I understand there were a few attractive women hanging around that scene as well. So stick me there, and I wouldn't be too bothered about coming back.

hmm, I can see you in a beret and dark glasses, a little goatee - perhaps even a thumbed copy of Jean Paul Sartre's 'Nausea' under your arm...

Like wow daddy-o, then who would you be man? If you could be someone from history, who would you like to be for a day? It can be someone famous like 'El Cid', or someone as supposedly insignificant as a fisherman during the evacuation of Dunkirk during the Second World War.

I think that there's a tendency, which you hint at in that question, to think that history is entirely made up of hugely significant figures and events. People tend to think of Fernando and Isabel as the most interesting period of Spain's history but, although it was arguably the most significant era, it isn't necessarily the one that I'd most like to study. The Carthiginian period was utterly fascinating, often comical, and left a huge legacy in terms of Spanish attitudes, but left very little for the historical record and tends to get glossed over.

You're also only giving me a day, which I think is a bit mean. If I was to pick Columbus, for example, I'd end up being him while he running round trying to get funding, or a long, stormy day in the mid-Atlantic, or coming home on a prison ship. It would be some Quantum Leap-style horror situation. Given my luck, I wouldn't get to be him on one of those days when he landed on some Caribbean island and was presented with nubile young women as an arrival present.

So although there are plenty of people whose lives I'd be interested in living for a while, I wouldn't want to take the chance of catching one of them on a bad day. That considered, I think I'll be a eunuch to the court of one of the Moorish kings. Good eunuchs were highly prized, and led quite privileged lives. I do get to come back after a day, right? I mean, that's a cast-iron promise, yeah?

I can't promise anything you know, and eunuch? Um, do you want everything else to revert back after that day too? I don't know, these time-travellers, want everything nowadays... I blame HG Wells. Given your apparent interest in nubile young women, let's move on to the next question. There's a certain branch of society who have trouble with 'history' and the fact that there's too much masculinity in it, and perhaps it should be 'herstory' too. Do you feel that woman have been given the raw deal somewhat by historians (perhaps because many of the chroniclers were men)?

To be honest, Matt, I don't know enough about the issue to be able to answer that...

Ah, diplomacy at its very best! Fair comment, sir. Let's talk a little about diplomacy then. Previous interviewees have spoken a little on certain figures of history who have been experts in the field of diplomacy - something as Post Editor I'm sure you're well-versed in *ahem*. Who inspires you, perhaps not just as a diplomat but also as someone who has left a contribution to the world??

I often display the diplomatic skills of Genghis Khan...
Most people know I'm a bit of an amateur naturalist, and I do a lot of
walking and campaigning on conservation issues as well. I used to be
quite a hardcore mountaineering type, spent loads of money buying
expensive gear and climbing mountains, as was once said, 'because
they're there'. Then I discovered John Muir, and realised I was
missing the point. Muir was an incredible guy. Rather than stuff his
pack with 30 kilos of impressive gear, he'd put a few sample bags in a
knapsack, throw in a sandwich and take off around the American
wilderness for a few weeks. He knew how to find food, light fires and
make shelters, and felt that it was a much more personal experience if
you could completely immerse yourself in it. When he wasn't
travelling, he wrote beautifully about his experiences and was one of
the pioneers of the 'conservation' movement. Now, I everything I do
in the Great Outdoors is influenced by him in some way.

I think it's best we leave it there, so our gentle readers can recover from the images of our illustrious Editor careening through the Great Outdoors like Ghengis Khan! You'd do anything for a decent pint wouldn't you! Thanks for your time Ed! I must get this written up by the deadline, I heard rumour my biscuit rations would be halved if I didn't get things done in time...

I don't mind them comparing me to old Genghis - I just hope everyone forgets the eunuch imagery. I've always felt that was more the role of Assistant Post Editors than the man at the top, to be honest...

It's been a pleasure. Now get back to work.

In the next issue of the Post JulesK will give us insight into her very own historical meanderings...

Keeping Up With Dr Jones Archive

Matt

with Skankyrich

22.05.08 Front Page

Back Issue Page