Ever wondered how to research your family history? Nick Barratt, historian and TV presenter, speaks to Platform about how he came to become the researcher on the BBC’s Who do you think you are?
What motivated you to become a historian and how did you then get involved with the BBC?
I wanted to be a chemist but I was very dangerous, more to myself than others around me as I kept dropping chemicals and burning myself. History was the second thing I was interested in. I had this passion for looking at evidence in a very different way. At uni, I met a very inspirational tutor who encouraged me to do a Phd and looked at the subject of ‘finance in the medieval period’. After this, I ended up working for the national archives as a reader/ advisor helping other people. It was purely coincidence I got involved with the BBC. One member of the public came up with a look of terror on her face clutching a 16th century document which they couldn’t decipher. It turned out they were a researcher on House Detectives and the next day, they pretty much offered me a job and the whole thing snowballed. For me, the love of history came out of fact that you can find stuff out no one else knew about so to apply that in a paid profession meant almost all my dreams came true, especially when it got me into Who do you think you are? It was the first piece of family history and I have the opportunity to go into an archive and find a story and look at stuff that no one else had seen, putting it all together and turning into a script.
How do you decide which celebrities to approach and feature on the show?
First of all I should flag up that they do a lot of research in house these days. That decision making process has always been done between production wanting a particular story line and the BBC wanting certain people on the show, good story versus good name. When we used to put the stories forward, we would look at themes and find the people who matched the theme. As the series progressed the emphasis moved more towards emotional impact rather than historical story. There is always a standard set of steps you need to take. First ,you need to identify the person. Second, you need to do the background research on them to make sure they look like they have a colourful past and can stand up to audience scrutiny. Third you need to start building the family tree as far back as possible as broad as possible to see if there is anything interesting there. Then you start the negotiation with the star themselves and find out what they know, what they want to find out, go to their friends and family and start to interrogate them. Once you get to that stage you have a pretty good idea if the programme will stand up.
Information is so readily available on the internet now. Do you think this has taken the fun aspect away from research or does it just give you a greater understanding of that particular subject?
The ability to find data is much easier and that data has become commoditised because quite often it is delivered without context. Data without context isn’t really research, it’s just assembling facts or pieces of information. So access to information has increased but the ability to research has been skewed to a belief that all you have to do is to type in a search word and you’ll find all you are looking for. It also makes it appear very easy which again is a fault with programmes where an archivist appears and there is your family tree. People don’t have the context to interrogate the data the way a historian would.
What do you think about the use of DNA testing to determine family history?
Again I think we have to be careful with our terms. Family history is an investigation into a family’s past. If we are talking genealogy, that is more the pure connectivity, stamp collecting of names if you like and in that sense it could be of some use. All it will ever do is either prove connection between two individuals or connection of one individual to a wider group of people who share a similar surname or ethic point of origin. It’s an imprecise art.
We are currently running an oral history project, which has been extended for another year. What value do you put on oral history?
Oral history is absolutely vital as it’s a fundamental link between the past, present and future and there’s this great academic downplaying of oral history in many cases because memories fade over time.It’s often held up that oral testimony can’t be as accurate as a written piece of paper, but after all a written piece of paper is someone’s thoughts at that particular moment, equally subject to bias and interpretation. For example the BBC set up a website where people could comment on their experience on the Second World War. I think the website was set up in 2002/3 and it was fantastic. One particular case study was six veterans from the same unit who fought in a battle in Italy on the same day. They recalled what they remember from very much a ground level ‘in the thick of the action’ view. Of course they disagreed on certain points but you really got a sense of the action, felt you were there. If you then compare that with the official unit war diary notes it was a series of very dry operational commands which was completely differed to what the men had experienced. Which is the proper source? The men’s account or the official version which is used to tell the story of that battle?
There is a lot of skill involved in researching in general and in particular local or family history. Do you think it would be good if more colleges and universities were to get involved in teaching people the skills to research effectively?
Yes it’s totally underrepresented. The ability to look for things, to marshal your evidence, to construct an argument, to adapt your argument in light of criticism and bring it up to the next level is so important. And you can’t do that without the ability to research and there isn’t enough done to promote that. In many ways it’s about narrowing down your research, fix your goals, the scientific approach, set our your aim, methodology, do your research, conduct your experiment, set out results and publish. If you aren’t given the parameters it can be daunting. Research is a skill and an art form.
Find out more about studying history with the OU at www.open.ac.uk/courses