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America at 250: A View from Britain, with “The Rest Is History”
Key takeaways
- Americans tend to see the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War as milestones in world history that inaugurated the era of modern democracy.
- New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday.
- The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC and The New Yorker.
Americans tend to see the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War as milestones in world history that inaugurated the era of modern democracy. But the British, unsurprisingly, see these events quite differently. David Remnick talks with Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland, the historians who host the popular podcast “The Rest Is History.” Growing up in Britain, Sandbrook explains, the Revolution seemed like “a parade of quite boring men talking very earnestly about liberty, [with] battles that involved twenty people in a field somewhere. . . . It’s not Waterloo!” The King was “annoyed” to lose the thirteen colonies to the new nation, but, for his government, “it could have been a lot worse.” Sandbrook and Holland discuss historical events that overshadow the American Revolution in the British mind, the 1619 Project and the subject of slavery, the “colossally consequential” Presidency of Donald Trump, and the fate of the British monarchy.
New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts.
The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC and The New Yorker.