Tell your daughter the truth
DAN SNOW, (the fit-looking TV historian who married into the aristocracy) has told his daughters, aged two and six, that women flew Spitfires in combat during the Second World War. This is very odd because a) they didn’t and b) given Snow is an historian you’d think he’d be wary of playing fast and loose with historical facts.
He says he did this because he didn’t want to “expose” his daughters to the “grim realities” of “gender relations”. He was with his children in an aviation museum and he said: “My daughter was walking down rows and rows and rows of these black and white pictures of Spitfire racers and she was going ‘boy, boy, boy, boy, boy’.”
He then felt bound to explain to her, “why all the pictures of women are of them in ball gowns or in formal dress looking quite wooden and all the pictures of men are of them rampaging around having a great time, being heroic and climbing mountains, shooting things, being soldiers”.
What’s worse (well I think it’s worse) he showed his girls pictures of the women who flew Spitfires as delivery pilots in the Air Transport Auxiliary and told them they were going in to battle. What an insult to those brave women in the ATA, a number of whom lost their lives performing this essential service. And how about the dashing women pilots in the pioneer days of flight?
What else should be massaged so as not to upset the ickle ones? Anne Boleyn wasn’t beheaded by Henry VIII after all. Goodness me no. They had a “conscious uncoupling” very much like Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin and agreed to share childcare and spend quality time as a family. Hmm.
Dan Snow says he lied about the role of women in the Second World War so that his daughters will feel free to “follow their dreams”. But why wouldn’t they feel free to follow their dreams if they were presented with the truth?
The real problem with the portrayal of women in history is that they have frequently been overlooked or rendered invisible. But examine the facts (those inconvenient facts, Dan) and a different picture emerges. For instance, all the guff surrounding the Royal Wedding would lead you to believe that there hasn’t been a single royal consort who wasn’t a docile doormat until Meghan the magnificent came along (notwithstanding the fact that our three most successful monarchs – Elizabeth I and II and Victoria – are female). But what about Henry VI’s terrifying wife Margaret of Anjou who would rustle up an army at the slightest provocation; Henry VIII’s sister, who was also Margaret, married James IV of Scotland and then faced off enemies at every turn to act as regent to their son after James was killed in battle against the English?
Catherine Parr, Henry VIII’s final wife, was not only a canny survivor but she was also the author of the first book published in England by a woman.
There are plenty of formidable women who Dan Snow’s daughters can take as role models. No fibs needed.
AS the new train timetable kicked off this week with predictable chaos, I thought: why can’t we put the people who ran the Royal Wedding in charge of the railways?