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From:
Subject: Re: [SoG] That Genealogy Programme
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 2004 15:33:10 EDT


When the Local History lecture on enclosures was over yesterday evening I
gave a lift to a fellow student. She works for National Archives and I enquired
about the making of the up coming series of programmes.

It seems that there was a little more to the reasoning behind the making of
the series than we suppose. I don't think I am giving away confidences if I say
that a senior person in the nation was part of a conversation in which
reference was made to The National Archives. Apparently the personage was not at all
sure what the National Archives are nor was any more clued up about the
title, Public Record Office. It may be that the story is partly apocryphal and that
there were probably various triggers to the programme making.

As to using well known 'personalities' [old fashioned term] or 'celebrities'
[a current term] that was no doubt a production decision. My companion told me
that the audience will receive an incorrect idea of the way in which National
Archive staff on the enquiry desks work. They point people in the right
direction but do not locate documents and look through them with the general run of
researchers. I received the impression that the programme will show people
finding information easily. Riveting television would not be made by filming the
usual research method of poring over documents and possibly making pencil
notes or entering data into a computer.

I suppose there will be episodes such as that in the first Alan Titchmarsh
programme about the British isles in which the jaw of a prehistoric creature was
'discovered' by poking about in a a puddle of brackish water.

Perhaps we should be using the repositories now as in a few weeks time we may
be crushed in the stampeded.

Cheers,
Janet Heskins
(Surbiton, Surrey)

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