What does this even mean - this idea that one shouldn't 'question the historical reputation' of historic properties? One shouldn't learn new things about them? One should only learn/teach 'good' things? (1/) https://twitter.com/christopherhope/status/1309774504256823297

(I won't even go into the idea that to question their reputation 'breaks faith' with the families that donated them. The National Trust has a statutory obligation to the public.) But to get back to this curious idea of 'historical reputation'... (2)

What it really seem to mean is: the idea of their properties that their former owners liked to cultivate. Other ideas are ruled out, for no obvious reason. And of course their former owners changed their own 'ideas' depending on their fugitive tastes...and interests. (3/)

I used to lecture to historic-house curators on the economics of the landed estate between the 18th and the 20th centuries. They were always shocked when I quoted the very common landowner's view of the 19th and early 20th centuries that. . . (4/)

....they cared most about the land, next about the houses, least about the pictures and furniture. That view became inconvenient when owners sought to refashion themselves from private landowners into 'custodians of the national heritage'. (5/)

But it had been the dominant view previously. You can't understand the pattern of survival if you don't understand that. Still, to many people it seemed a shocking truth even to whisper. The Telegraph remains reluctant to learn new things about history. (6/)

It grudgingly grants that there are 'effective' ways to reveal the complexity of history. But its reflex seems to be to accept only bits of that complexity that leave private owners' self-mythologizing undisturbed. (7/7)