{"id":2300,"date":"2006-03-08T14:02:55","date_gmt":"2006-03-08T19:02:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=2300"},"modified":"2018-08-24T03:28:16","modified_gmt":"2018-08-24T07:28:16","slug":"2300","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=2300","title":{"rendered":"(Beavan 2003) A History of Britain: Episode 15 \u2014 The Two Winstons&nbsp;[20th Century]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!-- \t\t@page { margin: 2cm } \t\tP { margin-bottom: 0.21cm } --><a href=\"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/viewing-2006-jan-mar-Simon-Schama.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-2301\" title=\"viewing 2006 jan-mar Simon Schama\" src=\"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/viewing-2006-jan-mar-Simon-Schama.jpg\" alt width=\"236\" height=\"142\"><\/a> <span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">This is the final episode in Schama\u2019s series, and the best. The \u201ctwo Win\u00adstons\u201d of the title are Win\u00adston Churchill, and \u201cWin\u00adston Smith\u201d, the fic\u00adtion\u00adal hero of George Orwell\u2019s <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><em>1984<\/em><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">, which Schama uses to refer to Orwell him\u00adself. Fol\u00adlow\u00ading the lives of these two obvi\u00adous\u00adly very dif\u00adfer\u00adent men, Schama explores sev\u00ader\u00adal dimen\u00adsions of Britain\u2019s social and polit\u00adi\u00adcal his\u00adto\u00adry in the 20th Cen\u00adtu\u00adry. His nar\u00adra\u00adtive is wit\u00adty, intel\u00adli\u00adgent, and orig\u00adi\u00adnal. His com\u00adments on both men are right on the mark. I can tell that Schama got to know Orwell through his remark\u00adable diaries and jour\u00adnal\u00adism, which were pub\u00adlished in paper\u00adback in the 1970s, and made a pro\u00adfound impres\u00adsion on all sorts of peo\u00adple (myself included).<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Schama is an aston\u00adish\u00adingly pro\u00adlific Eng\u00adlish his\u00adto\u00adrian who has pro\u00adduced some of the most read\u00adable his\u00adtory books of this gen\u00ader\u00ada\u00adtion. It turns out that he has a good per\u00adson\u00adal\u00adity to present his ideas on tele\u00advi\u00adsion, and this series is extreme\u00adly enter\u00adtain\u00ading. It also gets bet\u00adter as the series goes. Schama is most at home in \u201cmod\u00adern\u201d his\u00adtory (i.e. six\u00adteenth cen\u00adtury onward). So he rush\u00ades through through every\u00adthing up to the Nor\u00adman con\u00adquest in the first episode. The next two episodes focus on the Nor\u00adman and Angevin kings and their soap-oper\u00adat\u00adic strug\u00adgles (every\u00adone hold up their hands who pic\u00adture Eleanor of Aquitaine as Kather\u00adine Hep\u00adburn). The first three episodes are not as good as the ones that fol\u00adlow. When Schama gets into the areas of social and eco\u00adnomic his\u00adtory that he\u2019s most com\u00adfort\u00adable in, the series becomes excellent.<br>\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is the final episode in Schama\u2019s series, and the best. The \u201ctwo Win\u00adstons\u201d of the title are Win\u00adston Churchill, and \u201cWin\u00adston Smith\u201d, the fic\u00adtion\u00adal hero of George Orwell\u2019s 1984, which Schama uses to refer to Orwell him\u00adself. Fol\u00adlow\u00ading&nbsp;the&nbsp;\u2026<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=2300\">Read more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[948,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-d-viewing","category-du-viewing-2006"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2300"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9824,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2300\/revisions\/9824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}