Britain’s being written out of history

I NEVER knew how lucky I was in my schooldays. As a matter of course, I was taught the history of my country – especially its great struggles against tyranny at home and abroad.

And I was taught its literature, which, like our dark and clouded landscape, now forms part of my character.

Hardly a day passes when I do not meet Wilkins Micawber or Uriah Heep, or Pip Pirrip, or Mr Polly, come to that. I never hear a protestation of political loyalty (there’ve been a few this week) without thinking of the Macbeths’ oily, flattering welcome to King Duncan, a few hours before they murdered him in his bed.

I can’t hear some place names – Chalgrove, Sedgemoor, Plymouth Hoe, Runnymede – without a special thrill of recognition and pride. The story and drama of my country is part of me, and so it should be, and so it was for all my ancestors going back who knows how far.

Now the poor mites get nothing but Hitler and Henry VIII, and no Shakespeare, no Dickens, no Tennyson, and what is very nearly John Steinbeck’s worst book (and he wrote three superb ones), the dreary Of Mice And Men.

So I wouldn’t at all blame Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, if he had tried to ban it from schools. I’d be interested to see who’d buy it if wasn’t on the curriculum. But he hasn’t. He’s just said other books – including English ones – should be taught as well. And he’s right, if a bit late.