Stories from the attic ...... part 10 ........ when history is a dangerous thing

Always be careful of the history you read …………… because it ain’t always what it seems.

Now that might be a surprise to many, who like my mother always maintained that  “the past is what it is”, which because it is based on facts as Mr. Gradgrind espoused in Hard Times, is never to be questioned.

But I have enough books on the shelves which by their age and scholarship would seriously challenge that idea.

And lurking in a corner of the cellar are the six editions of Pictorial History, published by the Daily Mail in 1962 “telling the story of man from the Ice Age to the Space Age in six monthly parts”.

In cost two shillings and sixpence and arrived each week on the door mat from the local newsagent.

I remember pestering mother to buy them and I remember carefully looking at the pictures and pretty much leaving the text.

But a full 58 years later I have been reading each of the six.

On one level they deliver a comprehensive account of the history of the world, which is not over Eurocentric and includes  all the ancient civilizations, even if China and India are confined to five paragraphs on one page of Book One, and  Africa and Colonialism don’t get a look in.

I suppose they are of their age, which was still one where in schools little outside European history was taught and great chunks of the world’s heritage were ignored.

And that in turn makes them interesting, because they have become history books in their own right.  It starts with the total absence of women in the text summed up by that opening paragraph which refers to “the story of man”.

It signs off on Stalin and Russia with the comment “But the final aim of Communism never wavers.  The technical triumphs in science, industry and sport are only wayside stations on the crusade to make the world Communist”, while passing over the powerful and pervading influence of the United States of America in all things economic and cultural.

Nor does it hide the real concerns which preoccupied many of a future war between the two superpowers.

The penultimate chapter is entitled The Shadow of the Bomb, and concludes with “There is little doubt that this permanent shadow of disaster which has hung over a whole generation of young people is responsible for the instability of their conduct.  

The only encouraging side to the problem is that the results are now so certain and so terrible that even the most foolhardy statesmen would hardly risk a major war.  Nevertheless less the testing [of nuclear devices] continues to increase radiation dangers”.

Which was an optimistic interpretation nearly overturned by the Cuban Missile Crisis and the later nuclear brinkmanship by the USA and the Soviet Union during the Yom Kippur War of 1973.

And as frightening as the paragraph was, it does highlight that age-old concern that the young are somehow doing something wrong, which echoed through the earlier decades of the last century and into the century before that.

So, Pictorial History is of its time and as such might well be a little misleading if not dangerous as a guide to the past.

But in one aspect it is spot on, and that has to be the artwork which runs through the six volumes.

The cover designs are of the period, and I remember coming across posters and adverts which used the same bold style, some of which have also sat in our cellar for over half a century.

In time I may dig them out, and ponder on their inclusion in our new book “The Lost Stories  of Chorlton-cum-Hardy …. In Our Attics, Cellars, Garages and Sheds”.

The book is predicated on that simple idea that we all have “treasures” stored away which tell our own personal story as well as casting light on the history of the last two centuries.

Peter and I are working on it as I write, but would welcome contributions.

You can contact us by leaving a comment on the blog or through Facebook, telling us just what you have and its importance to you and your family.

Location Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Peckham, and 1962.






Pictures; from Pictorial History, 1962, from the collection of Andrew Simpson


*“Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir! “Thomas Gradrind Hard Times, Charles Dickens, Chapter 1, 1854