HISTORY BOYS (The reality show)

The Spectator.co.uk:

Andrew Roberts writes:

"I’ve been assaulted by a National Treasure. Alan Bennett, whose award-winning play The History Boys premiers as a movie this week, has cited my fellow historian Niall Ferguson and me as the inspiration for the loathsome, creepy, shallow, pederastic ‘TV historian’ character called Irwin, who represents all that is wrong about the presentation of the past in Britain. In the play — which has already enjoyed a run of over 400 performances in the National Theatre and on Broadway — Irwin’s character is so repellent that audiences are delighted when he suffers an accident that leaves him wheelchair-bound.
To have been the inspiration for one of the great villains of the international cinema — eviscerated by no less a literary paladin than Alan Bennett — was therefore within my grasp. I would be a cultural footnote, enjoying a fame that would last long after my own books were dust. I might even put ‘Villain in Alan Bennett play’ in my Who’s Who entry.

Every writer has to develop a rhinoceros hide against criticism, so the fact that a stranger disliked my work did nothing to prick the pachydermatous layers of self-protection I’ve grown over the years. Imagine my disappointment, therefore, when I watched a preview of the movie and discovered that, far from being the hateful representative of all that is dreadful about modern society, Irwin has been turned into a rather sympathetic character. My hopes of undying fame as a popular hate-figure slipped away. True, Irwin is still a fraud who lies about his educational achievements, belittles the Holocaust and plans to perform fellatio on one of his pupils — he’s still characterised as a ‘reckless, immoral’ teacher — but he is played in the movie by Stephen Campbell Moore as an essentially good chap.