Dan Snow’s a great chap, but he’s so wrong to tell his daughter women fought in Spitfires during the war

THE television historian Dan Snow has always seemed to me admirable. Not only did he row three times for Oxford in the Boat Race. He also found time to get a firstclass degree in History.

Since coming down from Oxford, the photogenic Snow has fronted numerous programmes for the BBC, on subjects ranging from the history of the Royal Navy to the Spanish Armada, in an energetic and informative way.

What’s not to like? Wel l , unfortunately quite a bit, it would appear. Snow has admitted he lies to his daughters about women’s roles in history so that they can feel free to ‘follow their dreams’.

Speaking on an online podcast, Dan Snow disclosed that while visiting an aviation museum, he falsely told one of his daughters that during World War II women flew Spitfires in combat. He hadn’t wished to expose his two daughters to the ‘ grim realities of pre-20th century gender relations’.

Without seeming to realise it, Snow has committed the worst sin of which an historian can be guilty. He is prepared to rewrite the past for it to fit in with the predilections of the present.

The irony is that the true story is an inspiring one — both for men and for women. A relatively small number of airmen in Spitfires and Hurricanes courageously defended this island during the Battle of Britain, arguably the most momentous conflict in our history.

But the contribution of women was no less vital. Thousands of them worked in factories to manufacture Spitfires and other aircraft between 1939 and 1945. The war couldn’t have been successfully prosecuted without women.

Female pilots delivered Spitfires and bombers from factories to front-line squadrons. They also ferried service personnel on urgent duty, as well as undertaking air ambulance work. During the war there were 166 women pilots, of whom 15 lost their lives.

Snow knows all this perfectly well. But rather than pass on the true facts, which offer an uplifting insight into women’s roles in the war while honouring the thousands of airmen who gave their lives, he concocts a fabrication so that his daughter won’t be left feeling unhappy.

FORa historian deliberately to rewrite the past is as shocking as a priest admitting that he doesn’t believe in God, or a judge in the rule of law. It strikes at the very foundations of his calling.

One might add that this calculating reworking of history for propaganda purposes is what some of the most obnoxious regimes in history, from Stalin’s Russia to Mao’s China, once orchestrated.

It’s true that Dan Snow was consciously misleading his daughter, and not the general public. But in a way this makes the deception all the worse.

One day — I assume — she will discover the truth from a teacher or friend, though she may take some convincing given that her famous historian father has told her otherwise. What will she then think? Mightn’t her trust in her father’s probity and veracity be undermined?

Snow’s damaging falsehood springs from a wrong-headed emphasis on modern ‘gender politics’. How extraordinary that, of all the events in our history, the Battle of Britain should be assessed through this prism.

Almost every day we are offered some new example said to prove that there is an in-built bias against women as a result of a conspiracy on the part of the male sex to keep them out.

It goes without saying that I don’t doubt women have been, and continue to be, victims of discrimination in many walks of life. But extreme feminist critics (some of whom are men) grossly over-simplify when they attribute all apparent imbalances to gender bias.

For example, on yesterday’s Today programme on Radio 4, a woman called Sarah Price was rightly held up for praise for winning a gold medal at the Chelsea Flower Show.

But she was quickly led to the conclusion that female gardeners continue to draw the short straw in competitions of this sort. She needed little persuasion, saying that only three out of the ten bestjudged gardens at Chelsea are the work of women designers.

So nasty men are at it again. Are they, though? Of course, I can’t be sure women garden designers haven’t suffered discrimination. But I can think of several other possible explanations which seem to me at least equally plausible.

One is that there are more male designers than female ones because more men are interested in designing gardens, and perhaps in garden competitions (which isn’t to say there haven’t been many brilliant female garden designers in the past).

This lazy insistence that deliberate inequity has taken place may have the unfortunate consequence of making men who have done well feel less worthy winners. And it turns a discussion which should be about the merits of various gardens into a dispute about gender bias.

ATTHE bottom of nearly all these debates is an assumption that if women win less than 50 per cent of prizes, or fill fewer than half the best jobs in a top profession, they must be on the receiving end of discrimination.

The Writer’s Guild has just complained that only 16 per cent of screenwriters in UK film are women. But might at least part of the explanation be that fewer women than men are drawn to this occupation?

And yet there are professions where women are fast becoming the majority, if they haven’t already done so. In Britain, more than 50 per cent of GPs are women, and some 40 per cent of physicians. Since well over half of medical students are women, increasing female dominance is inevitable.

Do I object? Not at all. Given that the female sex tends to be more compassionate than the male, as well as more practical and often possessing a greater eye for detail, the feminisation of the medical profession seems a good thing, though let’s keep open a few places for men.

The sexes are not equal in all their talents: they have different attributes. Women — unfashionable thing to say, I know, but true — are, on the whole, better with very young children because they are more patient and, usually, more loving.

Men and women also have different aspirations. Feminist activists often ignore this when they complain that only seven out of the biggest 100 British companies are run by women.

I don’t exclude the possibility of bias, but feminists should not exclude the possibility that many women are far too sensible (and dutiful towards their families) to want to work 100 hours a week, and then spend the entire weekend on the golf course.

To return to Dan Snow and his reshaping of history. As feminists often wrongly diagnose gender bias in the present, so he entirely misses the point when looking back at World War II.

Conceivably women pilots would have helped us win the Battle of Britain, but we did well enough with men. There are countless truthful heroic exploits by women in the last world war to inspire his young daughter.

Perhaps it was just a moment of fatherly madness on his part. He can still put his daughter straight and — if he wishes to be believed by television audiences — repudiate a silly and insidious lie.