Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
History... are they feeding us lies?
PICK of the DAY
BBC2, 9pm LET them eat cake! Did Queen Marie Antoinette really say that? Or is this just another piece of history we should consign to fake news?
In this fascinating three-parter, Lucy Worsley uncovers th e real stories hidden by historical distortions and exaggerations.
S he l ooks behind the popular narratives of those big moments and how they have evolved over the decades to suit the political interests of the age – and reveals that history is packed with whopping great lies.
Which is hardly surprising, since we all know that our recent history is full of fibs.
Ki c k i n g o f f w i t h t h e Fre n c h Revolution of 1789, there are plenty of myths to dispel – that famous cake command being one of them.
It seems Marie Antoinette has been misquoted to help historians explain why the revolution happened.
Historian Michael Rapport explains how the revolution wasn’t started by starving peasants as many assume – it was in fact sparked by a group of lawyers and property owners.
Lucy also finds out that Maximilien Robespierre was not the bloodthirsty revolutionary of popular imagination. And the guillotine was invented by the revolutionaries not as a brutal punishment, but as a more egalitarian and humanitarian form of execution.
Ultimately, Lucy discovers that everyone has a very different take on history, depending on their politics and nationality.
“We often think that royal history is definitive, but it’s not like that at all,” she tells us.
“Everyone has their own version.” It may be a bunch of lies, but let’s all eat cake anyway…