His trick when he looks at British history is that he always avoids cliche, telling the stories of people we might not have heard of in a way we would not expect.
And with this dramatic and colourful series, he has chosen a period before the First World War that has been neglected by TV for too long. The first episode was typical Marr: lots of silly voices and silly walks but it beautifully tapped out the tensions of the time from the dockers and the suffragettes to the Boers hacking away at the pillars holding the wobbly British empire up.
This second episode is even better, hacking away in turn at some of the myths around the build-up to the First World War.
To a vivid soundtrack of marching German boots, Marr describes Prime Minister Herbert Asquith’s attempts right up to the very last minute to preserve peace. But what he also does, which is perhaps even more useful, is point out how real the German threat was. Many people, including myself, have learned much of what they think they know about the First World War from films such as Oh What a Lovely War and All Quiet on the Western Front.
But just maybe they have simplified the story a little too much into nothing but senseless buffonery and incompetence.
In the 1960s we began to question the idea of the greatness of the Great War so there’s nothing wrong with questioning the pointlessness of the Pointless War.
Andrew Marr’s vivid portrayal of the prologue to the First World War and why we had to fight it may just help do that.
ANDREW MARR’S THE MAKING OF MODERN BRITAIN, BBC 2, 9pm
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