The last of the history men
David HermanRomola Garai as Anne and Eddie Remayne as Ralph in Stephen Poliakoff’s new film Glorious 39
Near the beginning of Stephen Poliakoff’s new film, Glorious 39, a boy goes to see two old men. “What do you want to ask both of us, Michael?” says one. The boy pulls out a family album and starts turning the pages. “I am very interested in history,” he says. No British filmmaker or writer of his generation is more interested in history than Poliakoff. It has been the subject of his best work, not only his latest film but also his great television dramas Shooting the Past, Perfect Strangers and The Lost Prince. Increasingly, though, it seems that Poliakoff is not only more interested in modern British history than anyone else, but is the sole remaining mainstream dramatist engaging with the topic at all.
Poliakoff began his career alongside David Hare, Ian McEwan and Trevor Griffiths as part of a generation of mainly left-wing playwrights, who produced powerful work on central moments in modern British history. Thirty years on, he is the only one still going on the subject. History has not vanished from our screens; what has gone is the central role of writers like these in interpreting the British past. Given the importance that Gordon Brown’s government has placed on the debate over Britishness in recent years—and the problematic and conflicted results the discussion has produced—this feels like an especially glaring lack. As an election approaches, our screens are almost devoid of what was once one of British broadcasting’s richest traditions: popular, politically engaged and intellectually challenging re-imaginings of the historical events underpinning national life.
Poliakoff is also one of the last auteurs of British film and television drama. His work has a distinctive feel, often reworking familiar themes. From early in his career he understood the importance of the techniques used in thrillers. Glorious 39, released on 20th November, is a film about appeasement. In 1939, a young British woman, Anne, belongs to a rich and important family. Her father moves in high political circles. Her brother Ralph works in the foreign office. She comes across a plot to steer Britain away from war with Germany. The appeasers will stop at nothing and only Anne can prevent them. It has the feel of a 1930s Alfred Hitchcock film; it also has first-class performances and a clever weave of references.
What about the history? It seems at first to be a familiar kind of historical narrative. Lots of big country houses, men who work in government, passionate arguments on what to do about Nazi Germany. Like Poliakoff’s other historical dramas, Glorious 39 is set in an exciting and mysterious place in which strange things happen. People in his plays disappear. And when they don’t vanish, they have secrets. At the same time, though, Poliakoff’s kind of history is about things that don’t belong in thrillers at all. He is determined to bring together the past and present, to connect modern British and European history. Often his plays treat the impact of historical change as a kind of catastrophe. Indeed, there is something White Russian about his view of history as a “huge bang,” smashing everything in its wake. The first world war, Nazism, Thatcherism: who can survive such changes intact? No one. It sounds bleak, but isn’t. While he talks about the “big history” of events and wars, he also tackles ordinary lives. And his genius is to have found, in mass audience television drama, a form allowing him to explore such questions.
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