Making history natural

The director of Coast could be forgiven a touch of cursing. To get the sound right Oliver must stand with his back to the wind. “It’s terrible,” he says. “There are constant cries of: ‘Cut. Do that again without the hair in your mouth.’”

Doing it again has become a theme for Oliver, who graduated with a 2:1 in archeology from Glasgow University in 1988. Until recently he was a jobbing freelance archeologist — £30 a week and all the mud you can eat. Then he and his colleague Dr Tony Pollard were spotted by Llewellyn at a conference on the Zulu Wars and the series Two Men in a Trench was born.

That was five years ago. He can currently be seen on primetime terrestrial television most evenings. In addition to Coast, he has muscled in on the competitive field of televisual history and in February will present a new show for Channel 4 called The Face of Britain, a blend of archeology and genetics. Radio 4 has just sent him to walk the line of the old Iron Curtain and he is currently filming a third series of Coast, which will be broadcast in March.

It is surprising he has found time to present Scotland’s History: The Top Ten. The new BBC series panders to an insatiable appetite for lists and pitches a disparate procession of people, places and events — each championed by different academics — and all linked together by Oliver.

The series culminates in a one-hour special on St Andrew’s night when a group of historians led by Professor Tom Devine, the Sir William Fraser Chair of Scottish History and Palaeography at the University of Edinburgh, will pit James Clerk Maxwell against Robert Burns, slavery against football, and Mary Queen of Scots against her father, to come up with their definitive top 10. The public will vote for an alternative list via the website.

The awkward-limbed, swivel-eyed academics are the perfect foil for Oliver’s jaunty approach and his tone is unashamedly populist. “The opinion of the person outside Greggs in Arbroath as to what is Scotland’s most important historical event is just as relevant as the opinion of Tom Devine,” he says.

It’s not a view one would care to extend to other specialisms — brain surgery, say, or architecture — but it chimes with the anti-elitist zeitgeist blowing through Scottish academia. Oliver denies his democratisation of history champions ignorance.

“It’s about making people remember their own history,” he says. “I’ve been surprised by the number of people who, when asked to name the most important person in Scottish history, have said: ‘My gran — because she epitomised what is great about Scotland.’ A woman from poor circumstances who raises eight kids and makes something from nothing typifies the Scottish character. For most people their gran is a more formative person in their history than William Wallace.”

It’s an attitude that would make David Starkey’s hair stand on end. It makes academics vacillate between despair and envy. “I’m not an academic historian,” says Oliver. “I’m an archeologist. I came into the programme to represent the popular vote and I’m interested in what people think about the past.”

Oliver, 39, says Scots’ knowledge of their history is generational, with people over 40 being the most well-informed. But most of them were taught in a system that favoured British and world history. The resurgence of Scottish history in schools is a recent phenomenon. So why are young people so ill-informed? It may be they have lost sight of the bigger picture as history is taught in modules without an overview.

Oliver, whose perspective goes back to the Palaeolithic, is concerned about this. “If you have a generation without that broad framework, it fundamentally changes how things are viewed,” he says. “History affects the way you understand the world. People who don’t have that education drummed into them become dislocated.”

The ignorant are also more susceptible to propaganda, he believes. Next year the 300th anniversary of the Union coincides with the Holyrood election. Independence for Scotland is likely to be a key battleground. “The anniversary is such potent ammunition for all sides,” says Oliver. “It is very volatile material and it will be manipulated by politicians. But you can’t pretend the history hasn’t happened. You need history as your shield against some of the self-serving bullshit which will be spread around.”

Oliver’s belief in the power of history to shape individuals comes from his own experience. He was born in Renfrew and brought up in Dumfries, the only son in a family of three. He was the first in his family to go to university, but it was a fascination with his grandfathers, both of whom survived the first world war, that made him who he is today.

“My interest in history grew out of my own family history,” he says. “Both my grandfathers came from a horse-drawn world and my paternal grandfather lived to see the space age. He was always a remote figure and I didn’t know him well. That bothered me. I knew how close I was to my dad and this was my dad’s dad. One generation up, but I didn’t know him. I feel guilty that I don’t have a clearer picture.”

This need to nail down the past has been heightened with the birth of his own children, Evie, 3, and Archie, 11 months, by his girlfriend Trudi Wallace. The family live in Falkirk. “I worry that I will be as remote to Evie’s children,” he says. “Am I going to be as distant to my grandchildren as a basket-handled broadsword from Culloden is to me? Am I going to be ancient history while I am still alive? “It bothers me that I didn’t know my mum’s mum and dad. If my maternal grandfather walked into a room, I wouldn’t recognise him. I feel my roots are quite shaky.”

You sense that in digging up the past, Oliver is searching for the missing bit of himself. It also explains his reverence for the public’s sense of their own past and the historical significance of ‘granny’.

An archeological perspective has also put modish concerns in a different light. For someone who spends eight months of the year clinging to a cliff in a gale, he is remarkably sanguine about global warming.

“It is impossible to preserve the coastline in its current form,” he says. “You think you know the shape of Britain from the weather map, but the coast is being redrawn twice a day. The tide is constantly changing things. What is taken away in one place is deposited somewhere else. What are you going to preserve? Britain has been changing shape for the last 12,000 years. You can’t fossilise it. We live in troubled times, but I think there is a culture which encourages us to worry.”

He describes Coast as “life changing” and he doesn’t mean in terms of his career. One of the reasons for its huge success is the presenters’ emotional attachment to the subject.

“Britain is sensationally beautiful and we lose sight of that,” he says.

Britain also has one of Europe’s longest coastlines, at 12,000 miles, and Scotland constitutes two-thirds of that. Stand anywhere in Britain and you are never more than 72 miles from the sea. Oliver is optimistic about a renewed interest in seaside resorts as the era of cheap flights ends and people discover the gems on their own doorsteps.

As for his favourite spot from the series, he finds it hard to single one out, but the Western Isles and southwest Ireland come to mind. “All the clichés are true,” he says.

He has coined a few clichés of his own. As breezy and rugged as the coastline he explores, he is a Heathcliff of the heaths and cliffs for women viewers of a certain age. He is now recognised in the street.

“Most of my fans are single men in their fifties,” he says self- deprecatingly. But there is no getting away from the fact that his star and his hair are in the ascendant.

It will be some time before we see the final cut.

Scotland’s History: The Top Ten is broadcast on BBC2 on November 30. If you want to vote, visit the website www.bbc.co.uk/scotlandshistory

Oliver's top 10

1 The Enlightenment. Voltaire said: “We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilisation.”

2 The courts of James V and James VI. They put Scotland on the European stage.

3 The Reformation. It changed the world.

4 The first world war. The killing fields in France took a disproportionate number of Scots.

5 Robert the Bruce. His family were hell-bent on getting control of Scotland.

6 The Declaration of Arbroath. It was the first time the authority of the monarchy had been challenged.

7 Hadrian’s Wall. The line was drawn by a Roman for bureaucratic reasons yet thousands have died over it.

8 Robert Burns. He exemplifies something different from the warrior tradition.

9 James Clerk Maxwell. The mathematical physicist who explained electromagnetism. A silent giant.

10 Mary Queen of Scots. Such a glamorous figure who was at the hub of so much. From her came the Union. Oliver’s top 10