A History of Britain (TV Series)

The British Wars (2001)

Simon Schama: Self - Presenter

Quotes 

• Self - Presenter : Here, at Edgehill, Eden had become Golgotha.

• Self - Presenter : Men who had broken bread together now tried to break each other's heads. Men who had judged together now judged each other.

• Self - Presenter : The civil wars were not just an unfortunate accident or an occasion to dress up as cavaliers and roundheads. They were in fact that most un-British event; a war of ideas. Ideas that mattered deeply to contemporaries because at the heart of them was an argument about liberty and obedience. That argument became lethal here at Edgehill and it would echo for generations down through British history. And as a matter of fact, that argument has never really gone away.

• Self - Presenter : Goes against the grain, doesn't it? A bit embarrassing, not to say painful, to be thought of as the fountainhead of revolutions. It's not very British. All that shouting, all that bible waving, all that killing.

• Self - Presenter : No one was reading from a script which commanded go forth and be democratic.

• Self - Presenter : The banqueting house in Whitehall simply takes your breathe away by the sheer cheek with which it ignores the English Channel. It's a piece of Italy transplanted into Britain; classical columns, tall windows, the ultimate architectural light box designed to flood the Stuart monarchy with brilliance. It was also meant to pin any unbelievers to the floor through the heavyweight power of its muscled allegories singing the virtues of the godlike king. So when you walked in here and you remember that the Stuarts had described kings as little gods on earth, you realized they were not kidding.

• Self - Presenter : Sooner or later Charles was going have to come down to earth, and when he did, he began to notice that his earthly kingdom was ruled not by images but by words. Now, unlike the invitingly soft scenery of Reubens' fantasy kingdom, words were hard things. Black and white things. And in the hands of wordsmiths, lawyers, preachers, printers they had a razor sharp edge that would cut right through all that Stuart mush about British union and bring the playground of the gods crashing to the ground.

• Self - Presenter : Poor old Laud. Is there anything good to be said for Laud and the principles he stood for? He's gone down as one of the most arrogant and destructive men in our history, but put yourselves in his vestments and it looks a bit different. Far from being an elitist, Laud thought it was the Puritans who were the authoritarians. It was the Puritans, with their obsession with reading and preaching, their gloomy fatalism, their endless battle cries, who deprived the ordinary people of what they needed from the church; color, spectacle. A sight of the Savior in the form of His cross upon the altar. The comforts of ritual, sacrament and ceremony. A fence to keep dogs off the communion tray. And most of all, the consoling possibility that sinful souls might at the end be received into Christ. What was so very wrong with that? Well, what was wrong was that Laud was not presenting his program as an option. He was presenting it as an order. Believe this, worship like this, pray like this or take the consequences.

• Self - Presenter : Among the victors was the MP for Cambridge. A cavalry officer with iron in his soul. His name was Oliver Cromwell and he was, he thought, doing The Lord's work.

• Self - Presenter : Charles will play the classic Stuart part, that of holy martyr as his grandmother Mary, Queen of Scots, had done. Imposing, dignified, tragic. But he knew, as well as Oliver Cromwell did, that the outcome was never in doubt. The King would die. The only question was as what; martyr or traitor? What had he learned? The answer was; nothing.

• Self - Presenter : Charles may have been smaller than life. Long-faced. Painfully formal,. Private to the point of being secretive. A stickler for decorum. As cool, as still and as palid as marble. But to many this was actually rather a welcome contrast with his father James who had been loud mouthed, pedantic and uncouth. But from the beginning, for those who were paying attention, there was something ominously distant about this small man on a big horse. Too lofty to bother with a coronation procession. A man who believed that kings were little gods on earth.

• Self - Presenter : All his life, Charles would try and fit the steel. Try to become the gartered Charlemagne beneath the British oak.

• Self - Presenter : On January the 30th, 1649, he was led out through the Banqueting House onto the scaffold erected right outside in Whitehall. The windows were all boarded up so Reubens' great anthem to the godlike omnipotence of kings was invisible in the gloom. The light gone out of it. But Charles didn't need the pictures. He had the script off by heart.

  Charles I : A subject and a sovereign are clean different things.