Well we had a lovely time at the Chalke Valley History Festival this year because who wouldn’t? Beautiful rolling valleys, excellent speakers, great food, fabulous displays (OK we’re a bit biased there) and a kind of buzzing village fete atmosphere that you don’t get at other festivals.
But more important than that we were very kindly invited to perform History Rage LIVE!
The contest was hosted and compered by Kyle and played out at Speakers Corner on the Saturday morning as our very own Host and Producer Paul was pitted against Dr. Zack White, Chair of the Napoleonic and Revolutionary War Graves Charity and to complete our list of duellists Historian, Journalist and Yesterday Channel regular Guy Walters.
So the first round was themed around people and Guy opened up with an attack on Otto Skorzeny, the famous SS Commando commander who ‘rescued’ Mussolini, telling our crowd how the man was a fantasist and that the whole operation was done without a shot being fired. Zack then delivered a blistering attack on the legend that is Napoleon with Paul rounding off that we should all stop putting Charles Dickens on a pedestal as the man had tried to have his wife committed to an asylum so he could keep her money and marry his mistress.
The public vote was cast and Paul won hands down.
The second round was ‘Events’ and Guy kicked things off by declaring that Jesse Owens really did not have the impact on the Berlin Olympics that we like to think today, followed up quickly by Zack taking on the legend of the Battle of Trafalgar and that it was not going to save us from invasion, in fact it didn’t even involve Napoleon’s English Channel fleet, finally Paul stepped up to announce that he’d happily do in the Princes in the Tower himself if it just settled the pointless permanent debate.
The votes were cast and Zack won a Trafalgar-esque victory
The final round was a quickfire round with each rager getting 1 minute on their wildcard subject. Paul dived in first with a plea to stick two fingers up at the archers’ salute, closely followed by Zack confirming that Hitler did die at the Bunker – even the Nazis thought this and finally Guy delivered an empassioned campaign to stop over memorialising the Second World War resulting in him winning the public vote rather dramatically.
So overall, a draw.
But we all had fun and it was a bloody good laugh. We are currently in talks to bring History Rage LIVE to the stage at Chalke Valley next year and Gloucester History Festival this year so maybe we’ll see you there.
Stay angry.