On the Dan Snow tweet I just RT'd - during my undergrad degree, coming from a comp school on a council estate, I really struggled to fit in at uni. Felt like many students didn't speak like I did, or shared the same background as me. Despite being a "consummate" historian...

...(one of my lecturers said that) I still felt like I was the poor relation in many seminars. There is a genuinely class-driven focus on history in the school curriculum, and by that I mean that we're usually taught about big characters and names, monarchs and the like...

...instead of more history being centred on ordinary people and their struggles. History is written by wealthy men in the blood of those from the poorest backgrounds, whether that be in terms of class, or "poor" in terms of their skin colour in relation to white historians...

...look at David Starkey as an example. He knows his onions when it comes to the Tudor Monarchy but by fucking Christ what an abhorrent world view he has. That intolerance comes from being cacooned in a little elite bubble, and is the reason why many historians are accused...

...of living in the past, so to speak. They use it to apply old values to modern, contemporary issues (thinking of Starkey's vile comments about black kids and the London riots in particular here). Its telling that the best bit of history I've encountered in the media is...

...actually by Alan Bennet, (himself a historian - 1st from Oxford, and the son of a butcher - one of the major reasons I admire him so much) in the History Boys where Irwin flips the narrative of WWI on its head, criticising the British establishment in starting the war...

...as opposed to the standard narrative (and one which I've yet to see many other British historians stop peddling) where the Germans are the instigators and aggressors. That's history. History should make you feel I comfortable and make you want to make a difference moving...

...forward. I didn't have the political voice and confidence back in 02-05 during my undergrad. I was too afraid of sticking out as someone who didn't belong in a sea of people who I felt had nothing in common with me. Looking back now I'm sure that many of them were sound...

...but at the time I felt alienated. Now I'm a 35 year old historian with a hardened world view, a view of a world that I want to change using history as my driver. I don't want to wallow in tropes and narratives in my history, I want to use it to change things. Unlike the...

...Starkeys and all the others who want to tell us that the Tudors are a great advert for keeping the monarchy or that the lads who were slaughtered in Flanders did so for a noble purpose.

End. Fucking hell I didn't know where that was going when I started. #HistoryIsBoss

Appendix: and don't even get me started on the lack of gender diversity and LGBTQ+ representation in history, whether that be from those delivering it, or topics where they form the central narrative.