Historian claims 'only 38 minutes' of Ridley Scott's Napoleon movie is accurate

Andrew you've seen this movie um you've pointed out some inaccuracies and some events that lack evidence um Ry Scott's response was pretty succinct um how do you effing know you weren't there no that's right which means that no historian could ever write any history uh prior to the day they were born in my case 1963 um no we we weren't there however fortunately all of the people around Napoleon were there Napoleon also wrote very EXT ensive Memoirs and they all wrote down what actually happened and so we are able to tell what happened um despite not personally having been around 200 years ago how much of the film is um what in your terms accurate of the 2 hours 38 minutes I'd say 38 minutes right you've um you've also been having a go at the crown where it's much more recent history yeah well I mean these are meant to be entertainments of course they're not documentaries you're not expected to have everything absolutely accurate but um Ridley Scott didn't call his uh his show a generic French 19th century Emperor did he he he he he actually called it Napoleon so I think it's right it's okay for us to say what's accurate with regard to the crown however that first um series um my friend Hugo Vickers found 1,000 factual errors in the course of the first series alone so really there is a point at which something becomes not even infotainment but pure entertainment and the danger is uh I think Trevor that in the United States it's considered to be a documentary it's almost history yeah but we you know we can't do everything to please Americans though American viewers we love you um but you know it's not just the issue of history in and works of the imagination is isn't new um Shakespeare's history was notoriously shuny I mean he puts the most famous assassin nation in history Junior Caesar in the wrong place um in MC Beth it wasn't McDuff who murdered MC Beth it was um Malcolm wasn't it nobody's complaining about that no but remember what kind of um problems he had to face when he was writing especially his history plays of course Queen Elizabeth the first was on the throne she was a tutor when he was writing about the plantagenet and indeed killing Kings and Emperors just like the two that you just mentioned um there was an enormous amount of political uh pressure on him not to uh not to um be too factual there's no political pressure on Ridley Scott or uh or the makers of the crown not to be too factual they could be very easily and they'd tell a better story if they did this is my major problem really is that if we didn't see Napoleon firing cannons at the pyramids and taking part in Cavalry Charges neither of which he did but actually looked at what he was genuinely doing in Egypt and and the way in which he actually was a strategist if we were told why he was a great emperor which which there's not a single second in the whole show about that um I think it would be a much more interesting way to spend $400 million or whatever it was that he oh okay but let's let's come back to Napoleon because um I think there are some interesting points raised in the film and you're you're right we would probably say if we were making a a dispassionate assessment that while we think of Napoleon popularly as a battlefield Commander his lasting influence is as a social reformer the code Napoleon the laws he imposed on the rest of Europe and so on um and in fact you had a great expression you describe him as the enlightenment on Horseback but a movie about a great bureaucrat isn't necessarily going to what we go and see is it no but you've got to try and explain why the crowds are cheering him and they're not just cheering him because he supposedly fired cannonballs through the ice at the Battle of alitz which he didn't do by the way oh God you're really yeah now you're really disappointing me yeah sorry about that there's ABS they' they' they've gone into the Lakes they've tried to find cannonballs and cannons and uniforms and so on and and then not that um but nonetheless um the key thing is that you can't there are many ways in uh entertainment that you can explain why somebody's a great man and yes you don't have to list the educational reforms of the saon and the lisay in the same way that I would in a history book but nonetheless you can um allude to you can make reference to in loads of different ways which would just be so simple all right well look um let's let's get the the Roberts assessment um he's a tyrant authoritarian he reimposed slavery in in Haiti but as you say educational reforms um political system and so on uh in the end Napoleon thumbs up thumbs down thumbs up he was a uh dictator rather than a tyrant he also abolished slavery when he came back in 1815 and he was a benevolent dictator okay um there's another element of this uh and you saw in the in the in the clips the Hat um some people would say that this is the earliest particular prop like Abraham Lincoln's stovepipe hat Harold Wilson's pipe Margaret Thatcher's handbag was it deliberate um yes it was it it had to have been because uh lots of other generals of the period didn't wear hats that way round essentially um and lots of them wore borns they wore them um uh front to back you know it was of course it was deliberate but um and it was a genius thing because his silhouette can automatically through the Hat be recognized by anybody and uh it was Victor Hugo who said that nobody in history had ever reclaimed an Empire simply by showing his act let me just um ask you very quickly one last question um what's the historical evidence for the so-called Napoleon complex the idea that short leaders are prone to insecurity and they make up for it by being overly aggressive I'm I'm not asking for myself I'm asking for a couple of friends with political Ambitions one of them is a 5' 7in investment banker and the other one is a 5 foot 8 in human rights lawyer average average height in this country 5'10 yes and I'm 5 foot6 and so I also have a the same height as Napoleon by the way I have a strong view on this should I be care worried there is no there's no evidence for for the Napoleonic complex when it comes to Napoleon that's not why he invaded Russia because of his height for example um but uh but uh Hitler was quite small maybe you'll make something of that Andrew Roberts uh before we get into any more controversial top ground thank you very much indeed for your time this morning thank you Trevor

Channel: Sky News

Views: 178,230

Keywords: SKY NEWS, SKY NEWS LIVE, SUNDAY MORNING WITH TREVOR PHILLIPS, HISTORIAN, ANDREW, ROBERTS, RIDLEY SCOTT, NAPOLEON

Id: MGdFkEI0U00

Length: 6min 42sec (402 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 26 2023