20/05/2008 by admin.

20 May.  Off to Liverpool St to meet Malcolm and Dan, the exec producer and director respectively, of my latest TV programme ‘Elizabeth’s Secret Armada’ for BBC2’s Timewatch.    It’s a hugely ambitious programme about the wreck of an Elizabethan warship that sank in 1592, four years after the defeat of the Spanish Armada.  Apparently the ship was en route to Brittainy with instructions and supplies for Sir John Norris, Elizabeth I’s famed general, who was fighting the French/Spanish Catholics.   The plan is to tell the story of the ship and film the weapons and artifacts recovered from it by marine archeologists.  We discuss storylines, dates, pieces to camera, living on board the dive ship, helicopter filming, firing the recast weapons from the ship etc.  Far and away the most interesting - and difficult - TV project I’ve been involved in.  Can’t wait to get started.  Filming begins in three weeks. 

Afternoon meeting with Neil Crombie of Seneca Productions, makers of Channel 4’s ‘Rum, Sodomy and the Lash’ (about the Georgian Navy).  We discuss a British Army version, ‘Scum of the Earth’, but decide that something more contemporary would be better.  Along the lines of me in Afghanistan with British soldiers, questioning them about life in the army today (rations, equipment, training, pay, married quarters, service conditions, danger etc!) and explaining how it was very different when the British were last in Helmand province in 1880, possibly by demonstrating uniform, equipment etc.  Very Channel 4.

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20/05/2008 by admin.

A bizarre weekend (10-11 May), but great fun.  An early start on Saturday to catch the 6.46 train to Harrogate, via London, to take part in the two day Nidderdale Literary Festival, set up in honour of Roddy Scott, a war cameraman killed six years ago in Chechnya by a Russian soldier.  I’m doing three events, so use the journey to mug up on the first, the history of war correspondents.  Also appearing are Kate Adie, Sandy Gall, David Loyn and Damien Lewis.   I do the history of the early years (Henry Crabb Robinson, WH Russell etc) while the others recall actual experiences from the Suez (Sandy Gall) to the Iraq War.  The event’s a great success, with a good audience and lots of questions.  Kate is on top form, and regales us with tales of recent wars.  She seems to have been around for ever, but is still as energetic and combative as ever.  After she tells me an eye-popping story about the British Army in the 70s.  I’d love to include it in my book, but will need verification!

The black-tie dinner that evening is a surreal affair.  The authors have been spread around the tables, and act as de facto captains for the pre-dinner quiz.  Many of the diners are retired locals, and a little hard of hearing, which causes the quizmaster Marcus Berkmann (the best in the business) no end of grief.   My table is not the most cerebral and we finish joint 7th (out of 10).   But it’s not all doom and gloom.  I have a chat with General Sir Mike Jackson, the former head of the British Army who’s also appearing at the festival, and he agrees to give a lecture to my MA Military History students at Buckingham University next year.  Also signed up (verbally) to give lectures are General Lord Guthrie, Hew Strachan, Michael Burleigh and Sir Lawrence Freedman.  Not a bad cast list.

Two more events the following day - Rudyard Kipling, with Charles Allen, and The Greatest General debate, at which my man the Duke of Marlborough is runner-up to the Iron Duke - before catching a late train to Hull. 

Next day I invigilate two exams and pick up the exam scripts for my ‘Generals and Generalship’ course.  I mark them over the course of the next few days and the results range from 73 (first-class) to 25 (fail)!  Who said marking standards are not what they were??

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01/05/2008 by admin.

The history dinner on Tuesday was a great success.  Good to meet Adam, and Ophelia in good cheer despite being the only one who did not drink (on account of her pregnancy - twins!).  Bettany on particularly good form - thanks, in part, to an earlier drink at the Wolseley - and v generously mooted the idea of us co-presenting TV history.  I got v excited until she told me that she hadn’t actually seen any of my programmes, and could I send her a DVD of something I’d done!  I’m tempted to send the episode of Time Commanders when I told the all-girl netball team that the best way to approach any problem, particularly a military problem, was from the rear.  I somehow kept a straight face.

Wonderful news from my literary agent.  A Spanish publisher wants to translate all three of my Penguin history books: ‘The Indian Mutiny’, ‘Zulu’ and ‘Victoria’s Wars’.  Apparently there’s something of a history boom in Spain at the moment, but who’d have thought they’d want war histories of the British Empire!

Spoke to a production company today about me doing a programme on the British fighting in Afghanistan, then and now.  Their idea, and a v good one at that.  Will discuss in more detail next week. 

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