History Vs Journalism: You Decide

For all his hand-waving, stories of journalistic skulduggery and self-parody, Andrew Marr cut rather a serious figure at the annual Bagehot lecture which we previewed here. Marr came to give a talk on the subject of "History and Journalism". Beneath the media friendly veneer he had some serious points to make.It was clear right from the start that Marr considers himself to have undergone a career transformation since he left his role as the BBC's political correspondent. Since then he has authored "My Trade", part biography, part history of journalism and "A History of Modern Britain", also a very successful TV series. As a result, Marr sees himself as having undergone a partial conversion and to have become a sort of popular historian.

Having taken that path, most of his talk focused on the differences between the two professions. It was very clear that he had become tired with his role as the BBC's Political correspondent with its focus on making everyday stories sensational and easily accessible for a primtetime audience and that he was very happy to be out of the 24 hour news cycle. He spoke of his frustration at constantly being outside the room where decisions were made and how rarely he felt that he was witnessing anything that could genuinely be called "historic".

His talk was filled with snippets of insight into how his old job worked such as his delight at how Alastair Campbell's assessment of him changed from "a bit of a nuisance" to "that bastard Andrew Marr" and his accusation that he was directly "bullied" by the government during the Hutton enquiry. And inbetween, as predicted, we got the steady supply of entertaining anecdotes. Even if he could be accused of having frequently stated the obvious during the "History of Modern Britain" TV series, it was quite clear that he is taking his role as part time historian very seriously.

After a series of unusually well-chosen questions from the audience, we all wandered into the main hall where there were plentiful supplies of cocktail sausages and wine. Always a good way to end an evening.