News / Interviews
David Olusoga on his new stage show, A Gun Through Time
Bafta-winning presenter and historian David Olusoga, best known for his powerful documentaries, A House Through Time and Black and British: A Forgotten History, is embarking on a new project: A Gun Through Time.
A stage show which will David will bring to different cities in England and Scotland in November, A Gun Through Time sees the historian unpack the stories of three firearms that changed the course of history: the Tommy Gun, the Maxim gun and the Lee Enfield rifle.
But what kind of benefits can be gained from looking at the stories behind these artefacts?
David told Bristol24/7 that he is passionate about “making history part of more people’s lives”, which he hopes A Gun Through Time will facilitate.
David David Olusoga, presenter of A House Through Time- photo courtesy of BBC
David described A Gun Through Time as a “different form of storytelling”, a hybrid between lecture style learning and television style storytelling which he hopes will further energise current public interest in history which has infiltrated pop culture through increasingly popular figures like Mary Beard and Tom Holland.
A Gun Through Time focusses on guns as objects that incite conquest, survival and social upheaval.
David explained that, despite their prominence throughout world history, most people in Britain will have never come into direct contact with firearms, making Britain both historically unusual and fortunate.
At the end of WW1, the British armed forces were roughly 4.5m strong and arguably most men in Europe had done some form of military service and encountered firearms.
However, due to current gun legislation in the UK, it is unlikely that most people in this country today will have ever come into contact with a gun.
Nevertheless, David said this picture might change with the increasingly unpredictable geopolitical climate: “We’re in many ways coming to the end of a bizarre and aberrant historical period”.
He explained that the shift from being a deeply militarised society to what Britain is today has been a “historical blip”, facilitated by the ever-present threat of nuclear war.
So will firearms continue to be at the epicentre of violence in the future, as they have been in the past?
In answer to this, David reflected on one of the three guns he mentions in his show – the Maxim machine gun.
It was a Victorian weapon, invented in the 1880s, but is still in use today for example in Ukraine where it was used against war drones.
He said: “A high-tech modern form of warfare, the drone… is being countered with a weapon that was invented when Queen Victoria was on the throne”.
David explained that while in Britain we tend to view firearms as a part of history, because we don’t typically encounter them, they continue to be part of millions of people’s realities just as the Maxim gun was once part of David’s ancestors’ reality in 1890s West Africa – when they were attacked by the British in what later became Nigeria.
A Gun Through Time will tour across English and Scottish cities in November, kicking off at the Bristol Beacon on November 2. For more information and tickets visit bristolbeacon.org/whats-on/david-olusoga
Main photo: David Olusoga
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