Taylor Downing: Reconstructions have freed up history

From a lecture by the managing director of Flashback Television to the Institute of Historical Research media conference, in London

One of the reasons for the current appeal of history on television is its range. As factual television has invented so many new formats in recent years, from makeover gardening to reality TV, so history has reinvented itself. At the one end, we have seen the 1900 house, the 1940s house and the Edwardian country house. At the other end, we have seen The Trench – in which a group of young men were given a taste of World War One.

All these types of programmes have tried to engage with younger viewers by asking them to imagine themselves transposed back in time to a particular historical moment. Interesting and very popular though these shows have been, they usually tell us more about people today than about lives 60, 80 or 100 years ago.

Although the houses of 1900 and 1940 revealed a lot about how our grandparents and great-grandparents struggled with the realities of everyday life, The Trench told us very little about the true horror of trench warfare. BBC health and safety regulations would understandably not have permitted the use of live ammunition, the terror of a real artillery bombardment or the horror of a gas attack. "Reality television" it might be; "real history" it certainly was not.

Another way to bring the past alive is the use of reconstructions to illustrate a theme. These re-enactments can vary from life in a medieval monastery to life at the court of Elizabeth I, from a scene at the camp of Napoleon's army to one at the airfield of an RAF Spitfire squadron during the Battle of Britain.

For me, historical re-enactments on television are justifiable when they evoke the spirit of a moment, the detail of a description, or the nature of some machine or piece of technology. And although they are rarely effective in painting a broad canvas – the scale of a battle or the mood of a vast crowd – reconstructions have freed up history from the ascendancy of the archive image.