What a Lovely War, The Monocled Mutineer and Blackadder, as a misbegotten shambles - a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite.
The "misbegotten shambles" and "series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite" that Gove insists is mythology was precisely what the idealistic Australian forces found.
What a Lovely War, The Monocled Mutineer and Blackadder, as a misbegotten shambles, a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite.
But perhaps even more significant that these have been the mistakes perpetrated by the establishment itself in its urgency to get the message right.
He condemned the widely held view that the prosecution of the war was "a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite" as the misrepresentation and myth-making of "dramas such as Oh!
He complained that for too long the conflict had "been seen through the fictional prism of dramas such as 'Oh, What a Lovely War!', 'The Monocled Mutineer' and 'Blackadder', as a misbegotten shambles a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite.
Writing in the Daily Mail he declared: The conflict has, for many, been seen through the fictional prism of dramas such as Oh, What a Lovely War, The Monocled Mutineer and Blackadder, as a misbegotten shambles – a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite.
Gove caused controversy earlier this month when he attacked Cambridge historian Professor Sir Richard Evans as a leftwing academic who was happy to "feed the myth" perpetuated by programmes such as Blackadder, that the war was a "misbegotten shambles [and] series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite".
Responding to an article in which the education secretary attacked what he sees as an unpatriotic, leftwing version of history that portrays 1914-18 aserieseries of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite", Hunt says such "ugly" and politically motivated interventions diminish what should be a time of national reflection.
Gove is concerned that a cabal including Cambridge academics, the makers of Blackadder, the London Theatre Workshop and the shadowy thought-beast known as "the left" are perpetuating that conflict in history "as a misbegotten shambles – a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite".
