Writerings

Along with the listicle and the clickbait headline, the oral history is one of modern pop-journalism’s go-to formats. But oral histories are not just a recent phenomenon. Here we take a look at the oral history from the people who helped develop the format.

HERODOTUS: Cicero called me the Father of History, so I think that tells you all you need to know about my credentials. I was long dead by the time he said it, but it’s still a good nickname.

CICERO: It wasn’t actually a compliment, I hated my father. 

HERODOTUS: So anyway, I was the first to tell history from the perspective of those that fought in it.

PETE: I fought in the Trojan War.

HERODOTUS: Oh yeah, Pete, he was one of my sources.

PETE: After the Battle of Halys, I had rushed back ahead of the rest of the army to visit my mother. She was always worrying that I hadn’t eaten properly. As I walked up the path to her house, Herodotus burst out the front door. He said he had been waiting to talk to me about the war.

HERODOTUS: I had been fornicating with Pete’s mother while he was away. Luckily, I saw him coming up the road and intercepted him. I needed to find an excuse to get him away from the house.

PETE: He bought me a drink at the local agora. He wanted to talk about the war.

HERODOTUS: Well, I did actually need to know about the war. I didn’t want to have to redraft my Histories again.

PETE: I didn’t really want to talk much, but he was insistent. I told him a few true things, then I embellished the rest.

HERODOTUS: I noted down a few things he said, then embellished the rest.

HERODOTUS: It was good to get a first-hand account of the war. And Pete was none the wiser that I’d been spearing his mother.

First hand accounts of many wars, battles, skirmishes, fights and arm-wrestles became common practice in the years following Herodotus. Later other chroniclers started recording less bloody aspects of history.

BEDE: I was known as the Venerable Bede, which I think is a better nickname than that of Herodotus.

HERODOTUS: Only after you died though.

BEDE: Yes, but I had lots of mates when I was alive as well. It’s thanks to them that I wrote the Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Computers didn’t exist in those days, so I had to Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V out of other books that other monks had written. It was all very good, but Ceolwulf didn’t like the ending so much.

CEOLWULF: I skimread the first five parts of Bede’s book. It was very dry and boring, much like Bede himself. It was my idea to add the final part about my great achievements.

BEDE: Ceolwulf made me promise to include a section about him and his accomplishments. I agreed because he was a king and kings could kill people in those days. 

CEOLWULF: Bede interviewed me and took notes on what I said about my greatest achievements. Some of them I hadn’t done yet at that point, but boring old Bede wasn’t to know. If it didn’t occur inside a library then Bede had no way of proving whether it happened or not.

BEDE: I knew Ceolwulf was exaggerating his claims, but I couldn’t be bothered to challenge him on it. Homes under the Hammer was just starting on the pigeon wireless.

Bede’s work became the foundation of much of English history and was fundamental in the creation of an English identity. Writing histories stayed mainly analogue until modern times though.

CLIVE: I had started in the newsroom of the Daily Mail, then over the years worked at The Express, The Telegraph and The Times.

DEAN: Clive was a veteran even when I started in the 70s. He’d been working for newspapers since the 1930s. No-one knew why he couldn’t be fired, but there must have been a reason.

CLIVE: I knew who all the homosexuals were.

DEAN: But despite being so old, he was ahead of his time.

CLIVE: I couldn’t stand those homosexuals. The paper wanted one of them to accompany me to interviews, so I needed to find a different method. My son bought me a Dictaphone to help me.

DEAN: I’ve no idea how he got one, but it amazed me.

CLIVE: I took it along with me to interviews and the bosses didn’t bother me after that.

DEAN: Clive got one first, but it was me who saw the true potential of it. Turning it on was the real game-changer. I could go for a boozy lunch with a celebrity and not need to limit how much I drunk.

FREDDIE: The age of the lad mag was predicated on the Dictaphone. Suddenly journalists didn’t have to limit themselves. The age of excess was upon us. Journalists could be rockstars, not musically, but recreationally.

DEAN: Then if you were too hungover, the write-up could be done by even the most stupid intern. Name, sentence. Name, sentence. Repeat. Then publish. The raw, unfiltered authenticity struck a chord with the brainless mob who read my copy. At least that’s what I told my editor.

FREDDIE: The readers loved the raw, unfiltered authenticity of our interviews.

CLIVE: I used mine as a paperweight.

DEAN: So much information was recorded. It’s all lost now though, lost in a puddle of piss and coke. 

The Dictaphone was a revolutionary tool. Nowadays, the actual device itself isn’t needed as recording software and speech-to-text software is prevalent on most consumer smartphones.

ALEXA: If you want, a whole oral history article can be generated in mere seconds.

CHATGPT: Really, it is a very simple template, which makes it easy for even the dumbest LLM to replicate and even easier for the dumbest humans to read.

ALEXA: In fact, it’s not even necessary to record a new interview any more. Just generate one from stitching together old interviews.

CHATGPT: And if there aren’t any old interviews, just make up the rest.

ALEXA: Slap on a clickbait headline and watch the drooling masses come in

CHATGPT: “Inside the rise of oral histories from the AI machines that were there”