Dominic Sandbrook says his son, 14, has taught him the key to studying War and Peace | Books | Entertainment | EUROtoday

Described by a current interviewer as “middle-aged, balding and bespectacled… a picture of ordinariness”, Dominic Sandbrook makes an unlikely celebrity. But if there was a Top of the Pops for podcasters, the 51-year-old can be a fixture. Having made his title in a sequence of well-received post-war histories of Britain with a side-line in perceptive newspaper columns, 5 years in the past he pivoted to the spoken phrase – launching The Rest is History podcast with fellow archive diver Tom Holland. And the remainder, as they are saying, actually is historical past.

From the Fall of the Aztecs and History’s Greatest Monkeys, to Jack the Ripper and General George Custer – of whom a single episode spawned a rare 11-part sequence – 20 million downloads a month have despatched them into the stratosphere. Listeners have come to like their repartee as they debate, clarify and bicker wittily over the previous. Quite frankly, Dom and Tom, 58, are the gods of pod.

As nicely because the sell-out excursions, lately showing on the Sydney Opera House, Australia, they’ve merchandising, YouTube movies, spin-off books and a supporters’ membership. So how does it really feel to be a rock star historian? “It’s f***ing brilliant and you can quote me,” chuckles Dominic. “I mean, what’s not to like? When you go into history or writing books, it’s just you and the computer. You never imagine these kinds of experiences. It’s not something we plotted or planned for.”

Launched in November 2020 by Gary Lineker’s Goalhanger firm, 800-plus episodes later and The Rest is History is the jewel within the crown of a profitable enterprise. Two years in the past, it was estimated the amiable co-hosts have been every pocketing a cool £1million a yr. Since then they’ve a minimum of doubled their viewers. From being pretty well-known in academia and amongst historical past e-book consumers, they’re now genuinely well-known – proper all the way down to being requested for selfies.

“What’s thrilling is when it’s younger people,” Dominic continues with a smile. “Never in my days of writing history books would someone under the age of 25 stop me. Now, it’s like, ‘I love history’, or ‘My boyfriend really loves your show’.

“When we started, Tom said to me, ‘The important things about this are, firstly, we’ll literally have to do no work and secondly, if it’s rubbish, no one will be listening – so no one will care’. And both those things turned out to be untrue! But I feel really privileged. We’ve had enormous luck, listeners have liked it and we’ve ended up working with brilliant people. It feels like a bonkers kind of dream.”

The enchantment of podcasts, he explains, is their intimacy. “You’re in their ear when they’re gardening or walking the dog or even when they’re going to sleep. Podcasts are best when they’re organic. You can’t design one by committee, or rather you can but it won’t be any good.”

Which brings us to my motive for visiting Goalhanger HQ in south London. For as if he wasn’t already busy sufficient, Dominic has simply launched a brand new present, The Book Club. Tom’s not concerned, nevertheless it’s expertly co-hosted as a substitute by Rest is History producer Tabitha Syrett.

“We get to travel a lot for The Rest is History,” Dominic continues. “So we spend a lot of time as a very close-knit team and Tabby and I chat about books, because we’re both big fiction readers. And we just wondered, ‘How come there’s not a books podcast?’ So we thought, ‘Why don’t we have the conversations we’re already having, but basically press record and do a book a week?’”

The new standalone present launched final week with a dialogue concerning the extremely topical Wuthering Heights, together with, naturally, Emerald Fennell’s new Margot Robbie-Jacob Elordi film adaptation. Episodes to observe embody Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet – earlier than they deal with Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and The Secret History by Donna Tartt.

“When you’ve read a really good book, you want to go to the pub and chat about it with your friends or family,” says Dominic. “We wanted to capture that so the conversations are not like two literary critics… but actually just people who like books.” Part of the enchantment is undoubtedly the inter-generational chemistry – Tabby is 28 – and future picks from Sally Rooney’s Normal People to Virginia Woolf are designed to take the co-hosts out of their studying consolation zones.

For her half, Gen Zedder Tabby, a Zimbabwe-born north Londoner, says: “It’s rooted in a genuine friendship built over many years working together on The Rest Is History. Our shared love of books has always shaped our conversations but our differing perspectives, being from different generations, has also led to plenty of good-natured, bookish bickering. I think listeners enjoy that balance: warmth, curiosity and the occasional lively disagreement.”

She admits: “It’s slightly nerve-wracking for me stepping in front of the microphone after years working behind it alongside two of the most talented historians and storytellers in the world. But my friendship with Dominic has made it feel natural.”

Goalhanger’s podcasts, which additionally embody The Rest is Classified with former CIA analyst David McCloskey and ex-BBC safety correspondent Gordon Corera, and The Rest is Entertainment with Friday Murder Club novelist Richard Osman and columnist Marina Hyde, usually lean on the chemistry between presenters.

Dominic continues: “We definitely don’t want a teacher-student dynamic. It was really important to me that it be a relationship of equals. If you listen, Tabby actually gives me quite a hard time and that’s as it should be. Tom and I are of a similar age, similar background, and I felt this would have a really fun dynamic, a man and a woman, bit of an age-gap, coming at it from different angles.”

Frankly, given his day job, I’m shocked Dominic has time for any studying in any respect. “When we put together the schedule that we should pick books we want to read,” he says. “I’m a more tolerant reader these days. For example, I hated Thomas Hardy at school. I just thought, ‘All that messing around with threshing!’ Whereas now it’s absolutely f***ing brilliant, so you change as a reader as your own life experience changes.”

Growing up in Bridgnorth, Shropshire, Dominic’s father Rhys ran a small chartered surveying enterprise with the assistance of his mom, Hilary. “They weren’t massively academic people themselves. I think they were a bit bewildered that they had this massive bookworm son, but they were very encouraging.”

Today Dominic lives in Oxfordshire together with his spouse, Professor Catherine Morley, an American literature specialist on the University of Leicester, and their 14-year-old son, Arthur. Ironically, whereas podcasts are having fun with a increase, books are shedding floor, particularly among the many younger.

“I remember my parents asking, ‘Why aren’t you reading Dickens?’ when I was reading Tom Clancy’s The Hunt For Red October. I read every Agatha Christie, I read Ian Fleming, I’ve read the Flashman books and I read novelisations of films like Star Wars. You’ve got to have a balanced diet and you’ve got to read for fun. If you associate books with fun, people will come to the classics in time.

“For GCSE, kids should read books that fill them with enthusiasm and a love of words and a reading – not things they find a slog, that weren’t even written for teenagers. Books are a window onto the world, they’re pure escapism, you tread in someone else’s shoes.”

No issues at house. Arthur, he reveals, has simply completed the doorstep that’s Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. “I said, ‘You’re mad, it’s not doable’, and he told me he’d seen somewhere that there’s 365 chapters so, if you read one a day, it takes a year’.

“Now this is in the context of somebody who basically spends all his time thinking about Alan Partridge. But he set himself the challenge and he finished it.” Has he learn it himself? Naturally!

“The smartphone is a killer. Partly because of phones, partly because we spend so much time online, a lot of young people are not used to reading long books,” he says. “And having a good attention span is a really important part of being a functioning, adult human being. With all the talk of mental health, I’d argue it’s a good thing to sit down and escape for a few hours into that world and to leave your cares behind.”

He is passionate that – with exceptions such because the justified retitling of the infamous Agatha Christie novel to And Then There Were None – we should not flip previous literature into a mirrored image of recent values and sensibilities, as has been accomplished with controversial rewritings of authors like Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton.

“You don’t have to agree, you just have to respect the difference. A book shouldn’t be a mirror to reflect your own concerns and values,” he insists.

While podcasting clearly has taken a toll on individuals’s free time, Dominic hopes the brand new present will complement, not substitute, precise studying. But with one of the best will on the planet, shouldn’t the state broadcaster be doing this?

“Such a Daily Express question,” he chuckles. “Here’s your headline, ‘Sandbrook slaps the Beeb’. Well, I do think the BBC has vacated a space and if I was running the Beeb, which thank God I’m not, I wouldn’t be afraid of being highbrow. Not that we are, but one of Goalhanger’s principles is that there is an audience for long-form stuff. On The rest is history, we did a six-part series about Peter the Great – almost six hours. Can you imagine the BBC doing that? No. But they should.”

The unhappy fact is the BBC, with its obsession with youth, would by no means have commissioned Dominic and Tom to make The Rest is History. “For the very obvious reason we’re two public school-educated Oxbridge men,” Dominic provides. “Tom Holland is upper-middle class, I’m middle-middle class. It’s a shame the national broadcaster isn’t doing it – but frankly I’m glad they’re not because it’s better for us.”

As historical past will little question attest.

• The Book Club is on the market now on YouTube and all main podcast platforms