Clive Ponting's 1940: Myth and Reality--and the Value of Reminding Us of What We Were Supposed to Know, But Don't

Some time ago I discussed here Clive Ponting's handy book 1940: Myth and Reality--and Angus Calder's rather dismissive attitude toward the book as a work not really bringing anything new to light.

Considering the snideness of Calder's objection I now recall the writing of one historian engaged in such a project himself in regard to quite a different historical subject. Owning that he offered little that could be considered new strictly speaking, he points out that some of those admittedly not so new bits he presented had been slighted in one way or another, whether ignored, or simply not fit into the fuller picture--and altogether, if known in part or even substantially by some specialists, never reached the wider public, and still less played their part in the making of a collective memory dominated by an Establishment-approved narrative that serves the agendas of the powerful rather than the public's right and need to know, or the historian's duty to fact and truth. The result was that gathering together the neglected or buried bits, examining them, putting together the Big Picture with those bits included and presenting them to that public never properly exposed to the bits, let alone their collective implications, was a meaningful and important task.

I agree entirely with that outlook--and certainly regard Ponting as having rendered a public service in his doing just that, presenting once more in very convenient form a more truthful version of the past in the face of the endless recitation of the Myth with which those of orthodox mind wittingly and unwittingly work to bury it.