The Rest Is History - 111. Golden Ages

Episode Date: October 25, 2021

Oh, to be Dutch in the seventeenth century. Or Roman in 150 AD. Or British in the 1990's. Tom and Dominic debate the merits of various "Golden Ages" in history, and ask whether we might have seen the last. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishist terror, murder and bloodshed. But they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love. They had 500 years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

That was Orson Welles as Harry Lyme in The Third Man. A famous description of civilisation and with its focus on the Renaissance as a time of terror, but also of stupefying artistic achievement. It channels kind of, you know, a slightly complex idea of the golden age dominic which is going to be our i don't think they do make cuckoo clocks today by the way i think they make them in the black forest in germany um that's correct so they do they do orson welles got called up so harry lime or to apologize because of course orson welles

wrote that graham green didn't write that he wrote the film but orson welles. You had to apologise. Because, of course, Orson Welles wrote that. Graham Greene didn't write that. He wrote the film, but Orson Welles wrote that speech. And, of course, The Third Man is itself the product of what people might see as a golden age of cinema, now defunct in the age of Marvel films and so on. So, yes, golden ages, it's a funny topic because it seems quite amorphous, but we all know what we mean. We all know, we all have a sense.

Well, do we? Do we? Because Faramir Zayn has asked, what makes a golden age a golden age? And conversely, Diogo Morgado, the only man in the world more left-wing than you, Dominic. Is that by his own description? No, he's just a parent. I mean, he's very, very, he is asking, isn't the whole concept of golden ages incredibly outdated?

Like the great man theory, the study of history has advanced beyond golden or dark ages to a much more interesting palette of infinite greys. So he's an Orson Welles man. Because, I mean, he does have, I mean, there are greys in that Orson Welles description. I think Orson Welles is saying that the Renaissance was Golden Age. It's just that the context for the Golden Age is violence. Yes, okay, fine. But you might say that a Golden Age is a Golden Age that's a cultural effervescence,

but is also economically prosperous. Yeah, though the two usually go hand in hand, I would say. Dutch Golden Age, Spanish Golden Age. The Renaissance is the classic counterpoint to that. So, Dominic, what do you think? What makes a golden age a gold? And is it legitimate to talk about golden ages? Yes. So what makes a golden age a golden age? It's all retrospective, isn't it? It's a sense of loss, a sense of nostalgia. So in a funny way, what makes a golden age a golden age is nothing necessarily to do with the age itself, but the age that follows it.

So in other words, the age that puts it on the pedestal. So you need a sense of, so it's not that the whole concept of golden ages is not just about yesterday. It's also about today. So in other words, what makes it golden? So you can't have a golden age without an iron age. You can't have a 1960s without a 1970s, maybe, put it that way. And I think, as for the second question, so that would be what makes the Golden Age.

It's perceived as a period of affluence or a period of success that's followed by one of disappointment. It's the kind of party and then the hangover. And the second point, you know, is it outdated i mean i'm sure historians academic historians would absolutely go along with this i mean i think if you sat in a university research seminar and talked about the golden golden age of this or that you know there'd be all sorts of disapproving looks and frowns and stuff but obviously it's i think it's it's hardwired into our kind of imagination,

our historical imagination, isn't it? That we think about the golden age of Athens, the golden age of Elizabethan England, the golden age of... And also politically, political parties generally trade in golden ages. So the Tories have a sense of when Britain was great. Labour has a sense of when Britain was compassionate. And everything has been downhill since then. I think that's part of any modern political movement's appeal. Isn't the anxiety around golden ages expressive of two things? One of which is the idea that, say, certain great works of literature or art or whatever can be said to be greater than those of other periods yeah and also that um the idea that it's somehow uh chauvinist to say that um a certain place

has a particular golden age and what about the other places um how are you measuring the golden age yeah sort of it's that classic distrust. Well, it's also that slight academic distrust of basically saying anything at all. Well, I think of saying that certain things were kind of better than other things. There's a real anxiety about that. Yeah, that's absolutely right. I completely agree with that. They're not better or worse.

They're just different. That's the sort of the mantra, isn't it? Yeah, it's Bob Dylan and Keats. Well, obviously, Keats is better than bob dylan i mean everyone knows that um because dominic you said you said um that golden ages are defined by ages that come after them yeah by and large by and large you're gonna now annoy me with an exception. I can just see it coming. Okay. So, yeah, there's a question from Max Parker. What would be the shortest gap between the Golden Age itself

and it being referred to as such? So I would say in the Western imagination, the founding idea of Golden Ages are Periclean athens yeah and august and rome so those are the those those are basically for people in the west those are the two pinnacles and so when you know we had mary beard talking about classics when you study classics the focus tends to be on the great writers of of athens and of Augustan Rome. And it was an important part of the mythology of both those periods

that they were living through golden ages. So Pericles gives a funeral speech in the second year of the Peloponnesian War. Spartans have been at the gates. And he says, basically, we're brilliant. Athens is great. We're the school, you know, we are the school for Greece. Yeah, we are the best. And I would say that to Max Parker's question, I mean, the golden age has already ended in a sense when Pericles says that, because very soon, great plague is going to hit Athens.

Pericles is going to die of it and the Periclean age is going to come to an end i mean obviously the genius of you know are we allowed to talk about genius i suppose kind of uh but you've got you've still got socrates and plato and the tragedians and aristophanes to come they're still floating around but it is a horrible age of plague and war so perhaps to that extent the myth the mythologization is going on and and with augustus you've got um this famous fourth eclogue written by Virgil before Augustus becomes Augustus even. I mean, kind of when there's still a civil war going on. And he has this kind of famous description of a new cycle, bread of time beginning again, and justice and a golden age. He says the golden age returns, and he describes the birth of a child a baby boy the generation of iron will pass a generation of gold will inherit all the world and the romans interpreted that as meaning

that this great golden age of of augustus yeah although of course in due course christians gave it a different spin but if we can unpick both of those so first of all periclean athens are people at the time aware do they think of themselves as living through a golden age and what was your answer so yes they do they do and to people immediately afterwards so in athens after the death of pericles after the death of socrates and so on do they think do they look back and say that was a golden age and it's been downhill since then so the golden age of pericles is when athens is at peace it's strong it's building the parthenon and so on and then the peloponnesian war presumably and then the peloponnesian war begins and i think i mean if you look at thucydides who's

our chief you know who gives us the funeral speech uh his book is a set you know his history is essentially an account of how over-optimism, based on a sense that they were living through a golden age, is what dragged Athens into what becomes decades of war and ultimately defeat. Hubris and nemesis. I mean, that often lies at the heart of all golden ages, doesn't it? The idea that doom and disaster are coming. You're in the middle of the party, but the hangover is looming.

As for Augustine Rome, I mean, how much is that? are coming you're in the middle of the party but the hangover is looming um as for august and rome i mean how much is that so again uh there's a different way that lots of people ronald simon so on have described that period as the imposition of an autocracy um after the sort of slightly creative anarchy of the republic that um there's a dark side to Augustus as a dictator, that all this is pure propaganda to justify his regime. I mean, that would be the obvious counter-argument, wouldn't it? That this is a golden age of a Roman totalitarian. He's not totalitarian, but yes, I mean, undoubtedly,

he's an autocratic figure. But against that, you know, where there had been war, he brings peace. And, you know, Virgil is just one of a number of poets who celebrate the achievements that, you know, the world of peace that Augustus has brought about. And I think that, that you know to this day it's looked back on as as an age of great cultural achievement um and of course it also has the overlay that comes from the fact that that jesus is born in augustus's life and so that virgilian prophecy has a kind of christian element as well but that doesn't matter for quite a while afterward. I mean- even once the kind of the hold of the literature of the period, which is massive on subsequent generations of Romans, once that starts to fade,

because Christians come to see it as having this cosmic significance. The age of Augustus is the time when Christ is born, when God enters earth. Therefore, it kind of massively dignifies it. But isn't that just one of three Roman golden ages, Tom? So first of all, just before Augustus comes onto the stage, there are people like Cato who have a sense that they're living in an age of luxury and dissolution. And before then, there was a purer, more decent Republican golden age that's now been lost well there's a there's a gold at the golden

age where saturn had ruled as king of italy on the capital that really is kind of quite a lost golden age the the idea of of kind of early rome as uh as virtuous and a noble um an age before they got corrupted by greek sex manuals and celebrity chefs and the like um it's it's not exact it's not exactly golden age though is it because it's it's it's an age when there isn't any gold that's the whole point they're virtuous because they they don't have gold they have nothing yeah they have turnips and they have war and they have their devotion to duty. And what more does anyone need? Great dad's army. So what about the, what I would say is the third great Roman golden age.

And this is the one that lots of listeners will be familiar with. Tom McTague sent in a question about it. The golden age of the Antonines. So this is the, Edward Gibbon talks about this in The Decline of Fall of the Roman Empire. And he says very famously, a quote you'll be familiar with, Tom, if a man were called upon to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would without hesitation name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus.

So it's the Age of the Antonines, Marcus Aurelius, Antoninus Pius, and so on. Was that a golden age? Well, there's another question from Will Rester, did the Romans believe at the peak of the empire that they were living in a golden age? And the answer is that one guy certainly did. And he was a man from what's now Turkey called Aelius Aristides, who in 154 came to Rome. He was a famous orator. And he basically, you know, he spoke to the imperial court and he said, Rome is brilliant. They must have been delighted by that.

They were. They absolutely loved it. And he described Rome as a great garden, the empire as a garden, that always kind of order and beautiful orchards and things like that. And that, you know, the weeds had all been pulled up and everything was fabulous. And it's that that Gibbon is drawing on, basically, in his opening to the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Yeah.

And, of course, what gives it the edge is that is that we know what's coming and and actually i think i'm right that ilius aristides in due course dies of the plague that hits the roman empire in the in the reign of marcus aurelius and which is a kind of you know it it's the first of numerous pandemics that sweep over the empire in the late second and throughout the third century and kind of merges with the convulsions of civil war that basically means that people inevitably in the third century are looking back to this time.

Yeah, crisis of the third century and all that kind of debased coinage and inflation and stuff. So an age of gold is followed by an age of iron. So does that suggest, therefore, that the idea of a golden age is kind of, it's absolutely inherent in the classical world sense of time, that there's a kind of cyclical, you know, the pendulum swings, age of gold, age of lead or whatever. Well, I think that the enshrining of of fifth century athens and augustan

rome as kind of twin pin twin peaks is a feature of how the roman world understands the past and indeed the hellenistic world because so one of the key things in enshrining athens as a golden age is the the sense that um say aeschylus uh sophocles euripides the great tragedians that these are the top three these are the top tragedians sense of a canon so it's so in alex yes exactly and so in alexandria when they build the library they ask the athenians could we have the copies of the plays and the athenians say yeah but you've got to pay a massive deposit because otherwise you'll never get it back to us. So they send the copies to Alexandria and the Alexandrians say, fine, but the tragedians of Athens of 5th century Athens are the classics, really beds down the idea that that was a golden age.

And the same happens for Roman education that Virgil and Horace and Ovid and so on get enshrined. And that, of course, then feeds through into the Middle Ages. And I do think that Athens and Augustine Rome kind of underpin the idea of golden ages for people in Europe. So you think of the Raphael painting, the School of Athens. Yeah. That is what a golden age is. And, of course, then it informs the Renaissance. Yeah.

But these golden ages, they're about power, aren't they? They're very powerful states that have exerted influence over their neighbours, that have won wars, that are now at peace. and that's the question that harry lime's piece focuses does a golden age is it okay for it just to be an age of great cultural achievement like renaissance italy or does it have to be an age of of military and economic power as well well i don't i don't think harry lime is right because i mean we've talked a little bit in this podcast before about how, for example, in the 17th century, people had an idea of the Norman yoke. And implicit in that is the idea that Anglo-Saxon England was a kind of golden age when people would meet and decide in assemblies the laws and the future of their society, when the heavy hand of the Normans with their castles and their knights and their feudalism had not yet crushed the spirits of the english working man so that's one golden age right i mean

that's and that idea that's very that was very popular with the victorians and indeed it was popular with sort of it's actually there in kind of progressive thinking a little bit that there was a a kinder gentler more bucolic age, which has been lost with the kind of, you know, it's kind of Hobbiton, isn't it? It's the Shire. Yes. Tolkien's golden age is very much related to that. I mean, that's got nothing to do with imperialism and winning wars. And because Anglo-Saxon was not a country that went out and fought wars, by and large. Well, it was an age in which there was a lot of slavery and the normal conquest got rid of it so it's almost the opposite of the truth right well i mean you can say the same about pericle

in athens though couldn't you and it goes of course there's a lot of slavery and there's a very big gap between rich and poor so it's not a golden age for everybody no absolutely not and and golden ages generally depend on it not being golden ages for other people right i mean almost by definition um um because because because uh you know what is it the the walter benjamin thing that there is no monument to civilization that is not also a monument to barbarism right exactly the parthenon was paid for out of the tax that you know the donations that the athenians extorted from the delian league and western rome was founded on obviously kind of you know, the donations that the Athenians extorted from the Delian League and Augustan Rome was founded on, obviously, kind of, you know, the mass exploitation of the provinces.

And I guess you'd say the same of kind of more recent gold. I mean, because you see, I do slightly wonder about golden ages, that I think that the closer we, I think Athens and Rome are kind of, they have a mythic quality because they're removed from us and they're distant from us. But in more recent times, I mean, can you seriously talk about a European state having a golden age? I would say maybe 16th century Spain, 17th century, the Netherlands, but I'm just going to say every week, Tom Holland brings me up and says, when are we going to do the golden age of the Dutch Republic?

I mean, you're famously obsessed with your namesake country and desperate to do that golden age. So you do think that, right? I mean, you mentioned the golden age of Spain. People do talk about it. I mean, clearly, Spain was a top nation in the 16th century. I mean, gold, literally gold flooding in from South America from its conquests.

Tremendous explosion of, you know, of artistic creativity and so on. I mean, Charles V is, you know, the most powerful man in the world by a billion miles. And it's again, it's that pattern, isn't it? Spain is not so powerful in the 17th century starts to become a bit of a basket case in the 18th century total basket case in the 19th and part of the 20th century civil war and then you know franco and so on so obviously the the 16th

century looms large and it would seem to me i mean obviously if i was in a spanish history seminar i wouldn't say this out loud but i might i'd be thinking it just seemed to me, I mean, obviously, if I was in a Spanish history seminar, I wouldn't say this out loud, but I'd be thinking it. It just seemed to me bonkers to pretend that the 16th century wasn't the top century for Spain. Yes. But I think in the case of Spain, a lot of the cultural peaks kind of follow on from it. And they look forward. They kind of... So you've got Cervantes, Don Quixote.

Yeah. Who mistakes windmills for giants. Well, he's kind of in that cusp, isn't he? So he's on the cusp. He's looking back to an age of chivalry. And then you've got Velazquez. Yeah. You know, these paintings of the court that is kind of, you know,

there's a lot of vulnerability there in Velázquez's paintings. And I think that the effect of that is retrospectively to cast 16th century Spain as being slightly, its decline is hardwired into its period greatness. Well, that's definitely true, but that's true of all golden ages though, isn't it? You said it at Periclean Athens. You know the plague is coming. You know the Peloponnesian War is coming. I'm not sure.

No, I'm not sure that's right. I think you think the Parthenon is amazing or Virgil is amazing. These are great achievements. I think with, with Spain, the greatness is actually in questioning the idea of greatness. Okay. Okay. Is that,

is that, I mean, I'm slightly thinking on the cuff. Let's hope there's Spanish specialists to listen to this. What about Elizabethan England? I mean, there was a film, the second Elizabeth film of the Cate Blanchett films,

is called Elizabeth, The Golden Age. And people always, I mean, my Ladybird books when I was a child, talked about the golden age of Elizabethan England, William Shakespeare, Sir Francis Drake. Defeating the Spanish Armada. I was just about to say, sending the Spanish Armada packing. We obviously don't mention all the naval battles we lost um and our own attempts uh they're strangely um not present in the histories but yeah i mean that sense of elizabethan england is a golden age is absolutely it has

for generations been hardwired into the british national consciousness hasn't it or these the english national consciousness yes it's an age of maypoles and Mary England. Right, exactly. And it's clearly not true. Yeah. But I mean, I think... That's the problem. I think it's an age of inflation and plague. Yes.

Elizabeth having very bad teeth. Isolation. Paranoia about Catholic plots and all those kinds of things. Hostility with Europe. Yes. Plague. Yeah. Inflation.

So you could say all those... Problems with supply lines. Right. you could say all those. Problems with supply lines. Right. You could say all those things about. People look back and say 2021, a golden year. But couldn't you say that about all these periods, that they're fictionalized, confected, kind of romanticized to some extent? But I mean, I reckon that the reason that people think of Tudor England,

Elizabethan England as a golden age is principally because of Shakespeare, because Shakespeare is seen as... Top writer. You know, our top writer. Yeah.

Top global writer. Yeah. But of course, I mean, you know, Shakespeare, you know, a lot of his greatest plays were written under James and nobody can say that James is a you know Jacobean England is a golden age because

he's Stuart so the civil wars are coming yeah but I think it's entirely down to it's not just Shakespeare but it's also the contrast between Elizabeth I, Gloriana Virgin Queen all that kind of stuff with the Stuarts but I think it's also the contrast between Elizabeth I, Gloriana, Virgin Queen, all that kind of stuff, with the Stuarts.

But I don't think it's... But see, I think that's the key. I think the 1590s were a terrible time. See, I think that's the key to this whole issue, Gordon, is that contrast. It's not the age itself. It's the often politically drawn comparison with the period that follows it.

Maybe we should take a break, Tom, and then we should come back and talk about, see, I think there's a lot to be said about 20th century golden ages, the idea of falling away from a period of virtue and so on. And we should do some more questions. So we'll see you after the break. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com.

That's therestisentertainment.com hello welcome back to the rest is history and dominic uh on the subject of golden ages yes of course one of the key aspects of golden ages was that um people with things to say had to be provided with platforms didn't they they did they did uh there were many platforms available but one in particular i think looms large in our minds tom doesn't it it does it does um it's uh it's an online magazine that very very kindly has uh sponsored us uh it's called unheard and i'm reading here their own self-description. It looks at today's events through a wider lens of history and philosophy and is full of independent thinking and writing. And it's full of really great writing. Is it?

I think it is full of great writing. I think it's it's not fair to say that some of Britain's absolute top, top, top historians write for Unheard. Is that right? Top podcasting historians. Yes. Can you think of any in particular? Well, Dominic, right, for UnHerd? Is that right? Top podcasting historians. Yes. Can you think of any in particular? Well, Dominic, I can think of you. Because last week, did you not, you wrote a piece about how we might be returning to 1970s-style high inflation?

Chilling. A chilling piece, I think, is the technical term. Such was life in the summer of 1975, you wrote in UnHerd. The age of Shawoddy Woddy, 10cc in the Bay City Rollers. Harold Wilson was PM. Tom Baker was in his time-travelling pomp. Britain had just voted to remain in the common market. And the space hopper was the fashion accessory du jour.

You see, even as you're reading that, people are leaving this podcast and flocking. They're flooding. Actually, they're flooding onto Unheard's website to read this top punditry. But I'm not wrong, am I, to say that top historians of the ancient and medieval worlds also write for Unheard, don't they? That's right. Yes. I also have written for it. This is a great spontaneous chat, isn't it?

Right. So, yes, it is. It is. So, Dominic, both you and I write for UnHerd, which is an excellent reason, I think, for our listeners to rush off to unheard. So our listeners, we are absolutely spoiling people. We really are. Yes, we really are. Unheard.com slash rest. And if you don't enjoy it, you can just unsubscribe. So that is truly an offer worthy of a golden age, is it not? I mean, I'm talking of not enjoying it.

The script says you can read Tom Holland on how Hitler killed the devil or how Martin Luther would rule Twitter. Now, we've done a podcast on that. Did you write that before or after the podcast? I wrote after so he just ripped off the podcast no no the podcast informed my views i refined them yeah i cut out the bits that you contributed and then exactly there you go yeah an offering worthy of a golden age so i think that's enough that's enough advertising let Let's get back to Golden Ages. Hello, welcome back to The Rest is History. We are talking Golden Ages. And in the first half,

we were kind of focusing very much on ancient Golden Ages, early modern Golden Ages. But Dominic, if we look at more contemporary history, would you say that, say, if we look back to the 50s, there's a kind of conservative take that that was a golden age. Absolutely. When you look to the 60s, there's a kind of progressive take that that was a golden age. Is it possible for one's sense of what a golden age is to be determined by one's politics? is it possible for one's sense of what a golden age is to be determined

by one's politics? It is determined by one's politics, I think, when you're thinking about post-war history. And actually, I wouldn't even start in the 50s. Ken Loach recently did a film, Spirit of 45. Yes, of course. And there are people at Labour Party conferences who wear T-shirts that say,

what would Clem do? In reference to the Attlee government post-war so but do they but no one no one thinks that you know austerity britain was a golden age you clearly don't read the comments under the articles in the guardian website tom i mean you you'll happily promote their saturday newspaper but you're clearly not digging deep enough into the um into the website because if you read the comments, lots of people say, oh, that was a time when people looked out for each other, when we had a government that was pure, when there was a real, it was tough times,

but a real collective spirit and people pulled together. Tough times. They showed compassion. But you can't have a golden age if the times are tough. But this is, well, that's a different, that's your kind of golden age that is like early Rome. You know, you said turnips and war. Yes, absolutely.

There's a kind of austere golden age, which is we had nothing but people. Civic virtue. Civic virtue. It's so funny. So there's a question on that. Where is it? Yes, Steve from Portslade. To what extent is the judgment of a golden age a moral one?

Yeah. I.e. golden age as we look at as examples of virtue and lost values. See, I don't think that is necessarily a golden age. So I don't think that the Attlee government is seen as a golden age any more than the Romans saw, you know, the kind of early years of the Republic as a golden age. They saw them as virtuous ages. Right. But I don't think that's quite the same. Well, it's maybe slightly different.

Maybe slightly different. I agree with you. Or maybe you could say 60s is because the 60s is a great explosion not just of kind of cultural achievement but it's it's prosperity it's well i think people some people would say the 50s were a golden age so they would say you're right there's a slightly sort of um uh a sort of i was about to say peteritchens, but actually he always says he doesn't think the 50s were a golden age. But there's a definite conservative argument, you know, 50s, oh, you could leave your door unlocked, full employment, you know,

crime was allowed. No immigration. I mean, well, of course the 50s was the heyday of immigration. So, so much of this is based on complete mythology. By the way, as is the countervailing mythology of the 1960s. And those two things operate, obviously, in conflict with one another. You know, it's a sort of Beatles versus Stones, 50s versus 60s. You choose your fighter kind of thing.

And absolutely true of America as well. Absolutely true of America. So, I mean, I think probably even more so, actually, that the 1950s and 1960s become kind of political tools in the 1980s and 1990s. Yeah. The two, you know, Clinton absolutely stands in the 1990s as the incarnation of 60s values and his enemies see him as such because they think the 60s were terrible. Now, the 70s, I mean, you can actually go through each of these sort of little slightly artificial chunks of post-war history i mean the 70s to some people when i often obviously write articles about the 70s and whenever i do there's the comments underneath are fascinating because some people will say the 70s were all inflation strikes terrorism is

absolute misery anyone who claims it was great couldn't have been there and then the next comment will say what are you talking about you muppets the 70s were an absolute golden age we went to university we had grants we had unemployment wasn't as high that awful witch hadn't come in and destroyed all our industries blah blah blah so those things are very very politicized yeah so there's quite i mean on theme, there's a question from Rory Martin. Nostalgia plays a big part of national myths and identities. Given recent slogans like take back control and the MAGA, make America great again. Does that mean most politics has to be about a return to an Edenic past?

Well, I think it is, isn't it? I mean, there's always a sense. The nature of being a political opposition means that you are almost always saying there was a better age before the current government were in power and we've lost sight of what makes us great. Well, is that not true? It tends to be true of parties on the right than the left. I mean, I know that the left have nostalgia for Attlee or whatever or Roosevelt in America't know, Roosevelt in America or whatever. Yeah, the New Deal, great society. But, I mean, it's kind of important on the left

to say that the best days are ahead of us, that we introduce better laws, we introduce better employment rights, and things will get better. Things can only get better. I mean, that's the... Well, that's your mate Tony's... So the golden age is projected into the future

i think there's a bit of both actually i think there was always a sense of a golden age in the past and particularly on the left in britain right now there's been a kind of sacralization of the atlee government of the 1940s and a sense that that was the only true labor government maybe less so the wilson government of the 60s you know because obviously they don't want to talk about blair because they people often regard blair as a sort of traitor and so on. But there is always a huge amount of nostalgia in left-wing thinking, I think. I mean, that stuff that we were talking about in the first half

about the Anglo-Saxons and the Norman yoke, I mean, that's been there in British socialist thought since it was there in the late 19th century, early 20th century when the Labour Party was founded. No one invokes that now. I mean, I think this is kind of real different. Maybe they don't. I mean, it mattered to Michael

Foote. It mattered to Tony Bennet. It mattered to that generation. Does it matter to Corbyn fans? Does Keir Starmer talk about the Norman Yoke? Well, Keir Starmer wouldn't, but Corbyn hasn't, as far as I know. I'm not totally convinced about Jeremy Corbyn's close knowledge

of British history, to be fair. You studied it at his public school. No, yes. Well, he's got an unfinished degree in trade union studies, hasn't he, from Polytechnic in North London? In that case, he must have it. No, I think politics is always an argument about the past as much as it is the present and the future.

And I think embedded in that is a sense of a falling away from an age of virtue. I absolutely think it's there, long tradition of political division. Yeah. That actually it's very difficult to agree on a kind of mutually accepted definition of a golden age. Yes, I do. And that's why I think the World War II in Britain is an exception to that because it's the one period where you have a national government that's put

aside party differences and their national interest. It's obviously a war we win. There's a sense of collective... It's a collective, but it's not a golden age because bombs are falling and there's... No, but you know what? So I mentioned Dad's Army. So in Dad's Army, which began in, I think, 1968,

for those people who are not British, so this is an enormously, ridiculously popular sitcom about the Home Guard, the group of kind of largely elderly men, too old to fight, who were formed in the beginning of the Second World War to defend the country in case of a German invasion. So this is a sitcom about them but the framing device they use is a reunion dinner i mean people have forgotten this the whole thing is meant to be a flashback inside a framing device of a reunion dinner when captain mannering and the other characters are talking about

um what has gone wrong with britain and they say you you know, we've lost sight of what drove us in World War II. And they're kind of looking back to a time when everybody pulled together. And there's an absolute sense that the World War was a golden age when people worked together. And that's been lost in the 1960s. Yeah, but it's not a golden age per se, I don't think. Well, you have a very specific description of golden age that involves a lot of poetry, I think.

I do. But also kind of success and prosperity. Yeah. So I think it's interesting, for instance, that we tend not to think of the Victorian period as a golden age. But I think people do think of the Victorian period as a golden age. No, because I think there's always been this kind of Dickensian shadow hanging over it. There's always been a sense of the workhouses and slums and industrial degradation and all that kind of stuff. And I think that's further complicated, obviously, by disagreements over the British Empire and so on. Like Britain, it's politically impossible to settle on any one period as being the golden age. And I think the same is true, say, of France, where there are lots of people who would say that the French Revolution was a golden age of egalitarian, fraternity, libertarian, that kind of stuff. But obviously, there are lots of French people who wouldn't.

But don't they all look back to the reign of Louis XIV and think that was a golden age? No, I don't think Republicans would. No, maybe not, I suppose. So you don't think there can be a modern golden age? I mean, do you not think that... I think in modern European nations where

there's an embedded history of left and right, of a profoundly different attitude, say, to the past, I think it's difficult to settle on a consensus, which is why I think that the last period that you can legitimately say, as a golden age, is kind of the 17th century in the Netherlands. Because it's not really political. It's not really, it's ceased to be political. It's about the kind of you know vermeer and and canals and uh tolerance and liberation and all this kind of stuff and who could object to that i mean

everyone loves all that everyone loves a canal and tolerance well the counter argument to that is that we had a ton of questions about the 1990s as a golden age and clearly a lot of people come to that do think of that so tom mctague who's of the atlantic monthly who's already asked we've allowed him to ask one question about edward gibbon he says when did our golden age end did it end in 1999 with the arrival of putin in september 2001 with iraq the invasion of iraq in 2003 with the crash of 2007 to 8 now implicit in that is the idea that up till then it was a golden age which we had only began in 1989 yeah and we had i i i don't have it here but i saw on twitter somebody asked a question saying the goal they felt the golden age was 1989 1990, when the world seemed to be getting inestimably better.

I think now maybe this is a generational thing. And of course, golden ages can be quite generational things. But don't you think that for our generation, the 1990s feel like a golden age of creativity, economic affluence, optimism, all those kinds of things? And drugs. Not in Chipping norton um of course not um well yes although on top of that i mean it's something that you said earlier about about people saying the 70s were great yeah was that often people identify golden ages with their childhood i mean we did a whole episode on the 90s yeah we've already done this but uh yeah i mean i i think that uh the sense that uh the west had

won that the end of history was being reached that uh russia was not going to be a problem so i think tom tague is right to identify identify Putin as a kind of shadow over that. That everything was going to be kind of multiculturally harmonious. So again, 9-11 was a problem with that. That everyone would want to become a democracy. So yes, Iraq was a problem with that. And that we would just keep on getting richer and richer and everything was going to be fine. So yes, the crash was a problem with that and that we would just keep on getting richer and richer and everything was going to be fine so yes the crash was a problem with that so you've done a very good job of not not choosing

one of tom o'take's options i'd say the crash would you i'd have said september 11th actually i think september there was there was a definite sense of anxiety after september 11th i think um and a change in tone with the war on terror from what had just kind of changed in cultural tone. I do think you need money to have a golden age. Yeah, I think money is a huge part of it. And it's perfectly possible. Now, I suppose that the shadow that hangs over this podcast is, is the sense of a golden age gone for good because the future will be worse

than, you know, tomorrow will be worse than today because of climate change, because of there are so many people chasing fewer and fewer and fewer resources, all those kinds of things. What do you think about that? Yeah, I think there's a kind of dystopian shadow hanging over, well, everybody, obviously, on the planet. Maybe particularly for people in the West, because there's another, Luke Brennan asks, has the West as a whole had a golden age, or even is it still in one now? Is it arguable that since the Renaissance,

the whole world has had Western primacy for good and ill, and this still remains even with China's rise? If so, will the West's long golden age end soon? So I think that is a really good point, that in a sense, the West, if you're measuring it by economic and military primacy, the West collectively has enjoyed a golden age

because it has had a kind of primacy which is definitely fading. And so the perspective, say, in India or China may be different. Yeah, I definitely think that's right. I think it's been an anomalous period of Western domination, hasn't it? I mean, China's an interesting one because there the idea of golden ages is kind of fundamental to the whole way that people throughout Chinese history

understand the kind of the rhythms of the cosmos, really, that things kind of come into the correct balance. And then you have a golden age, and then things kind of slip out of balance again. Emperors lose the mandate of heaven and so on, and everything gets upended. Yes, surely that's right. I mean, obviously that's, you know, in a communist state like China is now, that's no longer kind of overtly felt or believed, but it must still be, I don't know enough about China to know,

but I guess it must kind of be in the intellectual marrow. But surely, also, if you're one of the winners of today's China, you must have a very potent sense of living through a golden age of growth, of optimism, of cities will look back on now and say that was the moment when we were culturally, politically, economically more powerful than we had been for centuries. Do you not think? Yeah, I mean, I suppose that for the whole of Chinese history,

people in China have, rather like the West has done, have been able to take for granted China's primacy, that it's central, that what's good for China is good for the world. And that the measure of whether there's a golden age or not is how well China is doing. And obviously, the 18th into the 19th century, the discovery that China wasn't the Middle Kingdom anymore, that it wasn't the center of world affairs it wasn't the fulcrum of world affairs okay you know i mean no one could believe that they were living in a golden age with that and now that now that china is kind of returning to its traditional position as the the pivotal nation on the face of the planet i don't know maybe maybe maybe the

sense of history as a kind of cycle of golden ages replaced by ages of iron will will will kick back in i don't but i don't know enough about china to say i mean a country that we probably should be talking about it a country that's really never had a sense of a of a golden age in the past is the united states until now i would say so i mean henry lewis and that talked about the 20th century going to be the american century and there was always this sense that you know absolutely picking up something you were saying earlier that the the about politics that the future would always be brighter that the american dream was of success and of and initially an ever-expanding frontier and then basically

ever-expanding intellectual cultural economic frontiers but since probably i mean you can see the seeds of that in the 70s in john updyke's rabbit books they talk about the great american ride is ending and now very much in the last 10 years or so there's been a sense that you see it in almost all american public discourse a sense that america's best days may the fear that america's best days may lie in the past. And that's a big change, I think. Which would presumably, if you believe that, then presumably there's a golden age

by which you're measuring it against. Well, the golden age, I think, you see it absolutely implicitly in so much commentary about American politics. There's a sense that the golden age was between, let us say, Pearl Harbor and Vietnam. Do you not think? The presidencies of Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower,

and Kennedy maybe in particular. And with the difference, depending on what your politics is, whether you'd emphasize the 50s or the 60s. Yeah, exactly. But do you not think there's an idea that the Cold War gave moral certainty, that America had a mission, that it was making progress domestically and eradicating prejudice and so on. I mean, again, going back to that, the New Jerusalem of 45 or the early Roman Republic, a period of virtue. I mean, Americans did have that.

The period of virtue was with the founding fathers. Yes. Yeah. virtue i mean americans did have that the period of virtue was with the founding fathers yes yeah i mean it's not a golden age but it's an age that achieved great things which i think is slightly different yeah but i suppose that that is now coming you know that's now being refined these are all white men who own slaves so yeah that's so this is your diego diego morgado um yeah argument that's uh golden ages. And of course, people say exactly that, as we've said, about Pericles, about Athens, about Augustan Rome. These are societies about Ptolemaic Egypt or something.

These are societies based on slavery and exploitation. So have we argued ourselves into thinking actually there aren't golden ages? I think we may be, which is very, very depressing. Well, I think we should end with a couple of slightly offbeat questions, though. So Dave Walters says, is now the golden age of historians? And if not, when? What do you think? Well, obviously, I mean.

I think it is the golden age of historians, though, isn't it? I mean, there are more history books being written now, about more we know more about history than any body before or is less well maybe i mean maybe the golden age of historians was obviously uh fifth century bc as i know that's some thucydides well that's only two though isn't it i mean yeah but it's only two yeah name two more iconic historians. Holland and Sandbrook. Right. Okay, so I rest

my case. Paul Duncan says, what is your favourite golden age? Well, we think we know yours, don't we?

Your favourite golden age is the Dutch Republic. It is. I just think that I'm going to stand up and

say I think the Dutch golden age is a golden age. There was a big essay in the New York Times saying that it was, I think, racist to say that it's been cancelled. I don't care. I'm going to risk cancellation by standing up for the Dutch Golden Age. There's an exhibition, I think it's in Canada, of Rembrandt. I think it's Rembrandt, the Golden Age of Rembrandt paintings.

And I saw this online. Somebody's done a huge thing about it. Virtually every single caption when you go into every, because they're sort of very Justin Trudeau-like captions. So every single caption says, you know, Rembrandt painted this painting of some Dutch burger or something. But just think, if it hadn't been for slavery, how many more Rembrandts have been lost to us you know

potential rembrandt so in other words you can't just appreciate rembrandt on his own you have to be conscious of the costs of rembrandt's world of the casualties all that stuff well that's fine i but but i think i think that has i mean i think that has to be factored in you cannot have a golden age without exploitation yeah i mean it's not like because what was it was it uh um yeah steve from portslade's question about it being a moral one i don't actually think it is i think it's about a mixture of power prosperity cultural achievement um and a kind of legacy that people can look back on without too much moral anxiety or political anxiety. And I entirely accept the fact, you know, I mean, the Dutch in the golden age are proto-capitalists. I mean't think that we look at Rembrandt and think about slavery in the way, say, that we might look at a national trust property, perhaps,

and think about slavery. Well, some of us, anyway. You haven't asked me for my golden age. Dominic, what's your favourite golden age? I don't know. I'm still thinking about it. But why did you ask me to ask you? Maybe Britain 1976

to 9? Go on. No, I think... Darling, you must have one or you wouldn't have asked me to ask you. I'm quite Gibbonian. I think maybe because I read... Trajan? Maybe because I read it... Yeah, because

I read it when I was a sort of impressionable teenager. Yeah, exactly. The Rome under Trajan or something. But that's shaded about by ambivalence, isn't it? I think it's largely because I picture myself as one of the sort of enormously fat men lying on a couch eating grapes rather than as a gladiator in the arena or something um but i absolutely think that that sense of rome being a kind of golden age is is um embedded in the imagination of anybody who grew up reading ladybug books or later on watching gladiator or any of those kinds of things don't you i mean i think

to me rome is the yeah but but so is is the epitome, actually. But that Gibbonian description is so shaded by ambivalence and irony. So he's talking about Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, the Antonines, who delighted in the image of liberty. That's not me. I delighted in the image of liberty, but not the substance. Well, fair enough. I pose as a libertarian. Well, I don. I pose as a libertarian. Well, I don't even pose as a libertarian.

I pose as a freedom-loving person, but actually I'm an autocrat. Are you? Yeah, I'm quite autocratic, actually. Well, on that bombshell, self-avowed autocrat Dominic Sandbrook. Well, yeah, it goes hand in hand with the whole Marxistist with the whole marxist historian thing right yes you know i could be ceausescu um right we're just generating we haven't done that for a while because we've been doing some quite focused episodes on watergate and stuff before we start this i thought we haven't done a really vague rambling. Dribble.

Dribble filled one. Anyway, on that note, do you have anything else sensible to say? Yeah, we've got a very good podcast coming up actually about medieval science. Yes, we do. Which I think everybody will.

Was it the golden age of science? Yeah, which I think people will really enjoy because it will be much more focused and there'll be proper facts in it and we've got a guest so that's something um so we shall see you hopefully um next time goodbye if we haven't put you off for good bye-bye thanks for listening to The Rest Is History.

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