Let me open with a disclaimer: I'm a huge fan of Dan Snow's history programmes; they're visually exciting, filled with facts, they have plenty of fun along the way, Snow is a great and charismatic presenter, a reliable historian, and I try never to miss his programmes when they're aired. I should have praised him long ago but have for some silly reason waited till now when I have something to complain about.
And it is this: I was somewhat disappointed in finding that the "Filthy Cities" episode on London seems slightly tendentious and Union Jack-waving when compared with the (US-bashing) episode on New York. I realize that an episode of one hour cannot cover all facts, but the London episode was entirely about the plague in the Middle Ages, and it ends with these words: "London, ONCE a filthy city, would in time become the centre of the richest and most powerful empire in history, and remains to this day one of the greatest cities on earth."
Right. But compare this to the closing words of the New York episode:
"Many of the technological solutions that transformed New York City in the 19th century produced waste that has blighted the 21st. Every fifteen minutes, New York produces enough greenhouse gases to fill the entire Empire State Building. Those gases cannot be contained in the city that created them; now, it's a truly global problem (
) Our battle against our own filth will never be over."
Also true, but this leaves us to conclude that whereas filth in London vanished with the Middle Ages, global concern should now focus exclusively on New York as the main culprit. Snow mentions how the battle against the filth of New York began in 1851 but his London episode never gets to 'the Great Stink' of 1858, when the magistrates of London (seven years behind New York) realized that they had to deal with the filth of the Londoners (I actually thought that the 'Great Stink' would be the main topic of the London episode, with engineer Joseph Bazalgette as the hero who made the new planning of the sewers. But no). While staying conveniently in the Middle Ages with the London episode, Snow's New York episode presents the predictable amount of slum lords, corrupt Tammany Hall politicians and greedy capitalists that left the poor to suffocate and starve in the slums (as they did in London, too, and also here due to the indifference of those in power that ought to have cared).
Facts are these: London is every bit as filthy as New York, both cities ranging at damage level 'low to moderate' on the WHO scale. New York has actually been praised as a role model among cities in the battle against greenhouse gases – and the British are even slower at embracing hybrid cars than the Americans, as a matter of fact. And to return to the ending of the London episode: "London, once a filthy city, would in time become the centre of the richest and most powerful empire in history, and remains to this day one of the greatest cities on earth" – come again? What on earth do political power and world domination (which I would hesitate to brag about in these anti-empire days) have to do with pollution?
But when that is said; Dan Snow is a brilliant presenter and a thorough historian – and maybe he didn't write the script for this series? The credits are not quite clear on this point. Moreover, the above is my only complaint to anything I've seen from Snow.
