Peter And Dan Snow: 20th Century Battlefields…

It’s quiz time and today’s question is: Military historians – are they…
i) A respected and vital academic profession?
ii) Strange men who enjoy fiddling with little die-cast soldiers and recreating battles in their library-cum-play-room?
iii) A bunch of would-be gun-toting lunatics who are only separated from crimes of mass carnage by the thin veneer of social constraint they had beaten into them at some minor public school or other?

It’s a tricky question. I’ve always lumped them in the second and third categories rather than the first and viewed them as a sort of upper-class version of Dungeons And Dragons freaks. But with money. And decadent sex lives. In fact sex lives so decadent that they are now bored with any manner of carnal enjoyment and only find solace and understanding in the little tin men they so lovingly paint. Well that and felching…

But after watching a couple of episodes of Peter And Dan Snow: 20th Century Battlefields I am starting to revise my opinion on military historians. Because it’s actually quite an interesting area when it’s packaged as slickly as this…

The basic premise is that Peter and Dan take a battle or a smallish war or conflict and dissect it in chronological order, briefly examining the background stories then looking in more depth at how the key battles were won and lost.

This week’s programme concentrated on the Falklands War and gave a potted summary of how the hostilities began and how the British Army eventually overcame larger numbers with better equipment, clever planning and a large slice of luck.

It’s well researched, well scripted and not massively reliant on hi-tech CGI nonsense. The father-and-son team presenting it are obviously having a whale of a time, too, journeying all over the shop to try the battle terrain themselves and also getting to grips with some of the hardware used.

But the factor that really drives this show is the utter passion of the Snows. I’ve always loved Peter and him and his swingometer have single-handedly kept me entertained through coverage of General Elections past when the Tories were winning and I was very depressed.

But son Dan is new to me and he’s a bit of a revelation. He has all the academic background after getting a first-class honours degree in history at Balliol College, but he also has that utterly mad enthusiasm that fuels his father. He’s not an unpleasant bloke to look at either so I reckon he could soon be getting more TV work now the Beeb’s realised history can be sexy if you dress it up a bit.

It’s a smart, informative and entertaining series and I like it so much I may even dig out their previous series called Battlefield Britain. In short it’s the sort of show that probably only the BBC would ever make.

And if it keep potential nutjobs with an unhealthy fascination with warfare and guns occupied and stops them roaming the streets then all the better…