Q&A: Historian and Screenwriter Alex von Tunzelmann on the Intersection of Fact and Fiction in Her Work
The author of FALLEN IDOLS, screenwriter behind CHURCHILL, and co-host of the HISTORY FILM CLUB podcast discusses the collision of history and pop culture
Alex von Tunzelmann and I met while sitting across from each other at a mutual friend’s wedding in London, but it wouldn’t be until I moved to the city a few years later that our friendship really took off. The accomplished historian, screenwriter, and now podcast host has become one of my favorite conversation partners when it comes to all things art and culture. Part of the reason for this is how naturally she manages to express complicated ideas in wildly entertaining ways, which I think has always been on display in her historical non-fiction books such as the brilliant INDIAN SUMMER: THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE END OF AN EMPIRE (2007) about the end of British colonial rule of Indian and its subsequent partition and, more recently, FALLEN IDOLS: TWELVE STATUES THAT MADE HISTORY (2021) about statues’ role in our cultural storytelling past and present. Though I’ll say I’m equally enamored by how she translates her passion for history into work for the screen; for example, she wrote the feature film CHURCHILL (2017) — which starred Brian Cox in the titular role — as well as worked on the TV series “MEDICI”.
One of the emphases of this artist-on-artist interview series is intersections in art and artists, of creative collisions between mediums and forms and experiences in the work we create and enjoy, and I can’t think of many people I know who embody this quite like Alex. Her work as a historian and as a screenwriter, two very distinct forms of storytelling, are nevertheless in constant conversation with each other. We’ll be discussing this in detail along with FALLEN IDOLS and her wonderful podcast HISTORY FILM CLUB.
COLE HADDON: What I’ve always found fascinating about you, my friend, is that you so naturally straddle the line between historian and artist. For a while, I presumed this was because all art is storytelling and the same can be said about history – but I’ve also read a lot of history that bores the hell out of me, so I can’t accept that’s the best explanation anymore. How would you describe the relationship between the two — or maybe tension is the better word — in your identity?
ALEX VON TUNZELMANN: I don’t feel any tension about it at all! The interplay of fact and fiction fascinates me. I agree with your first opinion that all art and all history is storytelling. I’m sorry that some history bores you, but that doesn’t mean it’s not storytelling: it just means there’s loads of bad historical storytelling out there, just as there’s loads of bad art, bad novels, bad films, and so on.
CH: Fair enough.
AVT: I do two jobs. Both of them are about storytelling, but they have different methods, priorities, and objectives. If I’m writing history, my job is to seek some form of truth, while obviously understanding the limitations on that. I’m aiming to survey a huge amount of evidence, and boil it down to a form of explanatory narrative that aims to get as close to answering the “how” and “why” questions as possible. I can’t invent anything. Of course, I’m conscious that there is a creative process inherent in shaping a narrative around the random and complex events of history. Even so, I have a sense that facts are sacred: if you read in one of my history books that the sky was blue that day, that’s because one or more historical sources says it was. If there is a line of dialogue, that’s because I have documentary evidence it was spoken or written by that person.
If I’m writing a screenplay set in a historical period, my job is to tell the best story I can. The facts aren’t a confine. The confines,…are things like the priorities of the network or studio, the availability of actors, the budget.
CH: And screenplays?
AVT: If I’m writing a screenplay set in a historical period, my job is to tell the best story I can. The facts aren’t a confine. The confines, as you know, are things like the priorities of the network or studio, the availability of actors, the budget. I can invent anything I like. Arguably, I might still be seeking some sort of truth — but if so it’s an emotional truth, not a literal one. At the moment there’s a fashion for creatively untruthful fantasy and alt-history versions of historical drama, from “GAME OF THRONES” to “QUEEN CHARLOTTE” to SISU.
CH: What are the challenges that come from academically valuing facts, but, in a film like CHURCHILL or a TV series like “MEDICI”, telling an engaging, exciting story that will resonate with audiences?
AVT: The crucial thing here is to hang on to my point that writing history and writing screenplays are different jobs. I love both of my jobs, but they are jobs. Sadly, I don’t have the luxury of not having to earn money! That means someone is paying me to do them – so they get to set the terms of my employment. Imagine I’m hired to write a screenplay about a historical character – say, for the sake of argument, Anne Boleyn. It’s likely with a well-known story like this that the producers will want a fresh take. Maybe they want a riotous, tongue-in-cheek comedy Anne Boleyn like “THE GREAT”. Maybe they want the gritty BATMAN BEGINS Anne Boleyn. Maybe they want ANNE BOLEYN: SPACE COWGIRL.
CH: Brilliant title.
AVT: Now, obviously, I can counter-pitch elements of the show, and I can push back on notes. But realistically, if I’ve signed up to write ANNE BOLEYN: SPACE COWGIRL, I understand that my job is not fidelity to the facts. My job is to write the best possible version of Anne Boleyn herding cattle in space. If I don’t like that, I don’t have to take the job. And if I deliver a 1970s Glenda Jackson-ish script that is extremely faithful to history and has zero space cowgirls in it, I will be fired.
If I’ve signed up to write ANNE BOLEYN: SPACE COWGIRL, I understand that my job is not fidelity to the facts. My job is to write the best possible version of Anne Boleyn herding cattle in space.
Of course, shows do develop as you write them, as do the wishes of producers, studios, and networks. So, tensions can definitely arise during the process if one party goes in a different creative direction and the other doesn’t like that. That can happen in all screen projects, whether they’re historical or not. The only difference is that sometimes, if producers are trying to make me put something in a historical drama that I really don’t like, I can muster historical evidence to support my case — for example, “Anne Boleyn died 425 years before humans traveled in space”. Sometimes that works. Sometimes it doesn’t. It depends on what the producers think their audience cares about.
CH: What I find so interesting here is how easily you compartmentalize screenwriting and history despite the overlap of “history” as a subject, but that makes me wonder: is there a push-pull between the two? Any kind of gravitational effect you’ve been able to detect, about how the tools you’ve developed for writing one kind of “story” have influenced how you write the other in unique ways that might have not otherwise manifested if you were, say, just a historian?
AVT: Oh yes, definitely! I think the basics of storytelling are surprisingly consistent across media and even across time and cultures, but the variations are wonderfully infinite. One of the ways we can refresh and inspire ourselves as writers is to read, watch, listen, look as widely as possible.
CH: Can you give me one?
AVT: When I was writing my first book — INDIAN SUMMER, a nonfiction account of the end of the British Empire in India and Pakistan — the most useful book I read about the process of writing was William Goldman’s amazing ADVENTURES IN THE SCREEN TRADE. Even though he’s talking about writing fictional films, Goldman’s brilliant analysis of what makes story, structure, and character compelling was hugely influential on me. One of the shows I was obsessed with back then was “BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER”, which obviously has a completely different tone and material to a historical narrative, but I sat down and analyzed why the structure worked. I thought about how that show drew you in by having one big season arc but also smaller episode arcs, and how each character had some kind of storyline in every episode: they never just disappeared for whole episodes, but always had something going on. I translated those ideas directly into how I structured the book and chapters.
There is actually one vampire in the finished book. I refer to a legend of an angrez churail, an English vampiress who is said to entice unwary Indian men to their deaths in the Himalayan foothills. I couldn’t resist.
CH: I recall it! Switching gears here a bit, tell me about HISTORY FILM CLUB, which I’ve listened to several episodes of now and have been very much enjoying. It seems to exist at the nexus between history and cinema.
AVT: The reason I wanted to make HISTORY FILM CLUB grew out of a column I wrote for THE GUARDIAN for many years called “Reel History”. “Reel History” was all about watching historical films from a historian’s perspective, looking at how and why they diverge from history. I really loved doing it, and during the years of writing it, my own perspective shifted a lot.
CH: How so?
AVT: Like many historians, I started out quite anxious about the tensions between fact and fiction. But as I learned more and more about it, I found that a lot of the viewing audience for historical material is really very smart about distinguishing between fact and fiction. In fact, looking at fiction alongside fact and asking why they diverge is a great way to learn media literacy. I could see that when there was a big historical hit, like “THE TUDORS”, sales of history books went up — because film and TV can really hook people’s imaginations, and a lot of those people will seek out the real story behind what they’ve seen on screen. I also began to think a lot more deeply about how and why we use history as a form of storytelling in our societies.
Like many historians, I started out quite anxious about the tensions between fact and fiction. But as I learned more and more about it, I found that a lot of the viewing audience for historical material is really very smart about distinguishing between fact and fiction.
CH: Talk more about that.
AVT: Rather than positioning historians as in opposition to fictional storytellers, I wanted with the HISTORY FILM CLUB to create a space where we could talk much more positively about how history and historical drama can support each other. I teamed up with my brilliant friend Hannah Greig, who is a historical consultant to film and TV, to present. We invite both filmmakers and historians on to the show. We want to hear a range of perspectives and foster those links between historians and historical film and TV which I think can be enormously beneficial to both.
CH: One of the reasons I started this interview series was because I’m fascinated by the intersection between different artistic mediums and forms of storytelling. You’re discussing something similar here, so I have to ask: what has hosting HISTORY FILM CLUB taught you so far about, as you put it, the “links between historians and historical film and TV” that’s surprised you?
AVT: There’s much more mutual respect and learning than I think people might imagine. One of the jaw-on-the-floor moments for me was when we spoke to historian Marc David Baer about the Ottomans on film. I was expecting to talk about the incredible phenomenon of Turkish historical TV shows, but first he launched into a brilliant discussion of STAR WARS and how Jabba the Hutt is basically an Ottoman caricature. I had never thought about it like that. And I think many history lovers would be thrilled by how much many filmmakers really do care about history. Actor Stephen McGann spoke to us incredibly passionately about the politics of “CALL THE MIDWIFE”. The detail that emerges from trying to recreate or live history is also an incredible resource for historians. Archaeologist Jason Kingsley had us laughing out loud with his stories of how one might answer the call of nature on a medieval battlefield.
CH: Let’s talk about FALLEN IDOLS: TWELVE STATUES THAT MADE HISTORY for a moment, because it, like HISTORY FILM CLUB, exists at the nexus of academia and the arts like yourself. The book is having a very exciting conversation with history, with the storytelling inherent in it through twelve statues — through twelve artworks, essentially.
AVT: Yes, absolutely. As I explain at the beginning of FALLEN IDOLS, honorific portrait statues are a form of political storytelling. They’re not a neutral record of events. They’re a very deliberate and literal attempt to set one version of the past or present in stone. They’re an assertion of power in public space.
There was a lot of handwringing at the time about pulling down statues “erasing history”. I wanted to show how putting up as well as pulling down statues has been used to create and erase historical stories.
CH: When you first told me about the book, I was flabbergasted by how exciting the premise was. What inspired you?
AVT: I was driven to write the book by the wave of global protests, including against statues, by the Black Lives Matter movement from 2020. There was a lot of handwringing at the time about pulling down statues “erasing history”. I wanted to show how putting up as well as pulling down statues has been used to create and erase historical stories.
CH: Can you give me an example?
AVT: The book begins with the American Revolution, when the first act of those who listened to George Washington read out the Declaration of Independence was to go and pull down a statue of King George III. The statue was made of lead, and much of it was melted down into musket balls to be fired at loyalist soldiers in the Revolutionary War. I’m fascinated by how statues are used to create stories about individuals and societies – stories which, of course, may have no relation at all to the truth, any more than ANNE BOLEYN: SPACE COWGIRL does.
CH: I’m going to close by just saying how much I really want to see ANNE BOLEYN: SPACE COWGIRL now.
AVT: Hands off. I’ve just copyrighted it!
You can find Alex von Tunzelmann on Twitter. Her books are available around the globe; listen to HISTORY FILM CLUB here; and her newest podcast, HISTORY’S SECRET HEROES, narrated by Helena Bonham Carter, is available from the BBC.
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