Western Morning News (Saturday)
I’ve had to learn new skills... I’ve had to learn TikTok
TV’S DAN SNOW CHATS TO MARION McMULLEN ABOUT TAKING HISTORY OUT ON TOUR
What sparked your interest in history?
I come from a family were history is everything. History is absolutely essential. Other families have other hobbies, ours was history.
When I was a kid we’d be out every weekend in the driving rain looking around battlefields and castles... you name it. (Laughs) I didn’t really enjoy it very much, I have to say, but I got used to it and now I inflict it on my children.
We are so blessed here in Britain. You have amazing historical things in every city, town and village around the country.
It gets you out of the house, up the hill to the castle, or down to the docks to look at HMS Victory or HMS Unicorn, these wonderful ships that are around our coasts, the cathedrals, the beautiful old Saxon churches, stone circles, the industrial museums in the north.
You can go and look at George Stephenson’s original Rocket in Manchester. History comes alive and my kids love it.
Do you have a favourite period?
I love the 18th century, Jane Austen and Captain Cook. The French Revolution... love that period, when the world was starting to take shape and there was talk of ideas of feminism, democracy and individuals having rights, the right to vote.
And the British Empire really taking shape with amazing consequences around the world. I’ve been to Greenland to look at Viking churches and it just made me think ‘Oh, I want to stay and explore more of this coastline’, and I’ve been to Sri Lanka to film the first Portuguese settlement on the coast. I’ve probably been to thousands of historical sites in Britain, but I’m still discovering new ones all the time that are mind-blowing.
Did you have any work hit by the pandemic?
So much. I was going to be doing Second World War artillery and left-over Second World War vehicles out of a flooded quarry in Alderney.
I was going to be travelling around looking at the kings and queens of England and I was supposed to be going to France looking at the battles of the Hundred Years War.
Are you now looking forward to touring your podcast History Hit?
I’m really excited about that and we are taking the time to find great stories.
It’s a bit of road trip really because the history team will be arriving in each city, we’ll be filming, we’ll be podcasting and making a bit of an event of it.
In the evening we will do a live show and help the audience learn about their own city a bit, and bring on some experts and some friends from the podcasts and it’s going to be really good fun.
The weird thing about being a broadcaster, let alone a digital broadcaster, is you never know who is out there. You record your programme, you film Stonehenge by yourself speaking into you little microphone and you think ‘Am I just a weirdo? What is going on around here?’
And then a million people listen to it. You don’t have any concept of that. It just feels like you’re just a guy in a windcheater, huddled in a corner, so it is really nice doing the live shows and just seeing people’s faces and people into it, laughing along and getting it.
I’ve had to learn new skills the last year. I’ve had to learn TikTok – that was one which took my by surprise.
Were you surprised at the success of the podcast and your online TV programmes?
I’m very surprised. It’s complete luck. I would love to say it was genius on my part, but it’s definitely not.
I just got very lucky. I was in it early enough and the audience came to it.
I think I’ve tried to make sure there is something for everyone. We have the classic history subjects, your Tudors and the Second
World War, but we recently had one about Disney films and how love and marriage has changed perhaps in response to Disney and Cinderella in the 1950s. It seems to work. (Laughs) You never run out of history.
What is it like watching yourself on screen?
(Smiles) I have a vision of myself when I’m filming, that I’m still in the prime of life and that I’m striding around like some handsome Hollywood actor, and then I look at the reality and it’s some sort of middle-aged bloke with greying hair sort of staggering around the place with a highpitched voice.
I have a vision of myself striding around like some Hollywood actor and then I look at reality
How have you been managing home schooling your three children during lockdown?
Two of them are at the age when they needed an adult by them all the time. My oldest, my nineyear-old, just went off by herself working away. I was very much involved in the home schooling process.
Luckily they are still young enough that I was just about able to do the maths and the English, so we were all OK and history was alright, but my oldest girl is doing science and I was a bit nervous about that.
It was pretty intense trying to do all my podcast and filming as well, but lots of people are in a worse position than me so I can’t complain.