“This Is Your History!” – Cold War Kid in a World Gone Soft

​I was born under the watchful eye of a mushroom cloud, back when the telly had three channels and the fourth was fear. Somewhere between the damp carpets of working-class Britain and the static cling of government propaganda, I came squawking into a world locked in ideological arm-wrestling—East versus West, hammer versus hawk, black-and-white certainty painted across a grey and grimy globe.

​History never really stirred me in those school years. Not because it wasn't important, but because it was mangled into something sterile and preachy. We were supposed to sit there like good little troopers, parroting whatever the textbook pushed out. The Cold War? Oh yes, that little spat over Berlin and bombs. Just read chapter four and regurgitate it on Thursday. No room for asking why Kennedy blinked or whether Brezhnev ever cracked a smile.

But I've never been one for spoon-fed truths. My natural state was always: ask first, believe never, dig always. And I remember it clear as day—one dreary Monday that veered straight into the absurd.

We were meant to be cramming for exams—revision week. Everyone had folders bursting with highlighters, and even the class clown had turned up with notes. We marched into the room, expecting mock tests and stern silence.

Instead, the place looked like a street party. Flags of every rainbow flapping across the windows. The teacher stood there like a carnival barker—hat on, badge glowing like a divine commandment—and announced with the conviction of a man newly converted: "Today, we celebrate a truly great man. Nelson Mandela has been released from prison."

Now, don't get me wrong. Mandela's release was historic. Monumental. But I wasn't having this bait-and-switch. "What about our exam prep?" I asked. "This has nothing to do with it."

He looked at me like I'd slapped his gran. "This is your history," he declared, chest out, righteous as a vicar at a wake.

I couldn't help myself. "At the expense of our future?"

Boom. Detention. One week of watching the clock tick and pondering where it all went wrong. But that moment stuck with me, more than the speeches and the statues and the endless telly specials.

What I learned that day wasn't just about power and prisons. I knew that truth comes in layers—and even experts, with all their badges and hats, come wrapped in bias. That lesson stuck harder than any classroom quote. It was my real history class, served raw and unfiltered.

That incident marked the day I stopped trusting the narrative and began to pursue the nuance. History, I realised, is the only subject worth its weight in grit—if it's taught properly. That means warts and all. Let the kids see the cracks in the heroes and the humanity in the villains. Let them argue, question, and doubt. Let them bloody well think.

Because if you sanitise the past, you doom the future to repeat it, only with better graphics and worse consequences. History is the most outstanding teacher we'll ever have—if we let it breathe.

And so I've come full circle. What once put me off now fuels me. Not the polished myth but the messy reality. The kind of history that tells you what was tried, what failed, and what's still being lied about.

Let's preserve all of it—for the ones who come after. Let them see it all. And let them make up their damn minds.