But there was more than one Grosvenor Square anti-Vietnam demonstration, and such events took place in 1967 and 1968.

I saw the episode last week, though I cannot remember exactly what was said. But if they did get the year wrong, I don't think that's enough reason by itself to sack the production team and sell off the BBC. I don't think the programme is disgraceful at all, but rather good. What a poor economy we had - especially compared with France, Germany and Japan - for so long after the second world war.

I'm sorry, Tony, but there's no way this programme/series is anything other than extremely poor - from every conceivable point of view.

Leaving aside Marr's ape-like writhings and contortions, time and again he gets his facts WRONG:

* Dudley Moore was not a 'toff comedian' - he was born on a council estate in Dagenham.
* 'Look Back In Anger' was not an attack on the Macmillan government (LBIA was premiered in 1956 and Macmillan didn't become PM until January 1957).
* Macmillan never actually told Mrs. Thatcher that privatising state industries was 'selling the family silver'. 

But why go on....?

And, finally, Marr couldn't  resist that old journalistic chestnut relating to the outcome of the 1974 (February) election:
'Ted Heath asked: 'Who governs Britain?' The voters replied: 'Not you, mate!'

Please......

What makes things worse is that this series is apparently a 'hit' with the people who matter (newspaper critics, opinion-formers and Marr's fellow scumbag journos). Presumably they don't see the faults, because they're as ignorant as to the true facts as he is.

But maybe this is the shape of the future: forget facts, forget interpretations.  Let's just have 'History by anecdote'.  And apocryphal anecdote at that!

Nobody associated with this so-called 'programme' deserves to be gainfully employed.

I enjoy Andrew Marr's programme.

For me, History is not primarily about getting the facts and dates absolutely right, but more about understanding how past events have shaped the world, how they continue to influence things today, and how we can learn from them.

Of course, getting dates and facts right is vital for a Historian to ensure that he or she has got causes and effects in right and has not come up with a false conclusion about why the world is the way it is.

But if getting dates right was all there was to history, it would be a version of train spotting.

For me, Andrew Marr gives a very new outlook on why we are the country that we are.  That's what matters.

Thanks

Tommo

This programme is very useful for people of my generation, because it's all too recent for my parents who unbelievably actually LIVED through this stuff!! Therefore this era and those events never get talked about; it's useful for me to actually know the details of what went on in those years which are  actually not too long ago (however ancient it may seem to my eyes...  )

Two anecdotes I remember from Sambrook:

After the Suez debacle, Anthony Eden took a cruise, and was much taken by impressed by a beefy young steward who regularly won the onboard boxing competitions.  (No suggestion of sex, just he personally liked the guy.)  The steward was John Prescott.

Reggie Maudling was asked what sort of whiskies he liked, to which he replied "Large ones."

I was looking at my wallchart of British prime ministers that came free with the Guardian today and thinking about what we look for in a prime minister through the ages.

We notable exceptions of course, we favoured members of the aristocracy, then those from "well-connected" families, those who went to famous public schools, then grammar school types (Wilson to Thatcher) and now it's people with hair. (I sometimes wish William Hague had become prime minister as he would have been the first from a comprehensive school.)

Of course, when I say that we "favoured", we often got little to choose between or didn't even have the vote.

Being more serious, I did enjoy the light shed on the Harold Wilson years, which I was a little too young to understand at the time, and why he was disliked even by many in his own party.