Dominic Sandbrook

Historian, columnist, presenter.

Dominic Sandbrook is one of the most popular historians working today. Today, he is best known for co-hosting the extraordinarily popular and widely revered podcast The Rest Is History. Launched in 2020, the podcast achieves millions of downloads every month, frequently ranking among the most listened to in Britain.

In his academic work, he has lectured at the University of Sheffield and has been a senior fellow of the Rothermere American Institute at Oxford University and a member of its history faculty, before he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2021.

Why did we invite him on?

Dominic’s analytical and inviting approach to history has earned him millions of fans, us included. We’ve long been followers of his work, and he’s been top of our must-have list for years. His ability to bring complex, dizzying subjects down to earth and illicit a sympathetic-but-rational view in his listeners is unrivalled, and we felt that equipped him for the largest historical subject of all: the field itself.

We wanted to talk about how the discipline of history has changed in the last few years, and the dangers of moralising the past. Are we too idealist? Too emotional? Is it a mistake to put ourselves in the shoes of our ancestors, or is it the only way to make real sense of it?

What did we learn?

"There’s always been a tendency within history to see it as black and white, as goodies and baddies … If you read Roman historians from the time, the accounts are very moralistic - good emperors and bad emperors, and not much nuance. When I was studying history in the 1980s, there were questions about whether Thomas Jefferson should be ‘cancelled’ for having children with his slave, and I think that was a harbinger of what was to come.”

This, Dominic explains, boiled over in 2020 during the heat death of Black Lives Matter. Suddenly, it wasn’t enough to judge historical figures by today’s standards - we had to destroy them. Tearing down statues, pulling their works from libraries, and erasing them from the cultural conversation. Admittedly, these figures were imperfect, and many people will have been hearing about their ‘transgressions’ for the first time - it’s tempting to overreact. But Dominic wasn’t surprised. Why? Because he knew; this is what people are like.

”When I approach history, I think ‘Of course people behaved sadistically, greedily, selfishly’. Because that’s in us; we would be no different.”

Konstantin suggests that this arrogance is a predictable side effect of our comforts. For decades, the West has lived in relative security - it hasn’t faced an existential threat in over 80 years. A slim percentage have seen combat, but even then, it was never for our safety or on our shores. Almost nobody alive today knows what it’s like to fight for your nation’s survival, and that fosters a certain level of self-assuredness, which in turn mutates into arrogance and a hyper-critical outlook. Dominic warns against this, pointing to a more recent example of British conflict to explain why.

”The Falklands War, by the standards of war, was clean. But as accounts from soldiers started coming out, we learned that many of them took ‘trophies’ home with them. As grim as this is, it’s pretty standard stuff. Canadian soldiers at D-Day were notorious for taking ears, taking ‘trophies, being pretty hardcore. Now, it’s World War Two, it’s ‘the Good War’, so we don’t make a fuss about it. But you train people to do the most savage thing possible, and that line is always going to be greyer and more slippery than we would like. Let’s not be so pearl-clutching about this.”

People are complicated, both then and now. These bizarre habits might disgust us, but are we in any place to judge?

Similarly, humans today are complicated, and it explains why two historians, while both experts, may have such diverging views of major events and figures. Taking the example of Winston Churchill, Dominic maps out how conflicting assessments emerge and why one isn’t necessarily flawed.

“I completely get that if you’re an Indian historian, you’re going to look at different aspects of Churchill’s life and career, and you might find him objectionable. That’s completely fine, but it’s also acceptable that people see him as the symbol of patriotism, the symbol of winning the Second World War. Why wouldn’t we? It’d be weird if we didn’t.”

Churchill is a savvy mascot for this phenom. In the throes of BLM’s worst extremities, his monument in London was desecrated. Factions of the far-left deemed him a war criminal, reduced to bigotry and bloodthirst. To most of the British public, this was anathema - for nearly 80 years, Churchill had been the archetypal ‘national hero’. Now, he was a monster, with an image laundered by his resistance to an even greater monster. Where does the truth lie?

“Churchill has a duality. He saved European democracy from the Nazis, but he also said some terrible things about Indians - people are complicated. Think of people you know: they’re capable of terrible things, and tremendous things.”

Dominic slaloms to a similar figure, this time going back hundreds of years.

”Oliver Cromwell is, to me, the most fascinating figure in British history. He can be a very savage character - when he’s commanding at battles, people describe like ‘laughing as if he’s drunk’. But on the other hand, he’s someone who wrestles with his conscience, what he thinks is God’s plan, feels himself unworthy… Most dictators don’t think like that.”

This leads naturally to a subject of expertise for Dominic: the British Empire. Colonialism is arguably the defining story of Great Britain. But in some circles, it’s its greatest source of shame. One looks to some of the actions undertaken by English colonisers and winces at their cruelty, and it’s easy to take that as the central attribute. There exist several prominent voices who seek to portray Britain’s history as not just the most evil, but uniquely so. Is that accurate? Should we feel that way? Why do they?