Holding out for a hero

Neil Oliver is something of a dragon slayer: he's already seen off academics who went for the jugular over his forthcoming BBC TV series on Scotland's history. Now, in his new book, he says that today's boys have no good male role models to learn from. JIM GILCHRIST meets a true man's man

BATTLEFIELD archaeologist Neil Oliver has excavated some of Britain's most historically iconic sites, from Bannockburn to Edgehill, and has explored our shores as presenter of the popular series Coast. This autumn he will steer a potentially stormy course through Scotland's history in a major BBC series. His current preoccupation, though, is a bygone but not-so-distant age when boys were boys and men were manly.

The title of his latest book says it all: Amazing Tales for Making Men out of Boys. With distinctively '50s-style comic-book packaging, it is a nostalgia-infused compendium of derring-do, such as Nelson's death at Trafalgar, the Spartans at Thermopylae and the Zulu victory at Isandlwana.

The book is an unashamed, if not entirely po-faced, celebration of old-fashioned heroism and a lament for the passing of "manly" role models, which may raise a few eyebrows. Oliver, however, relishes controversy, and may be embroiled in more this autumn when he fronts The History of Scotland, a ten-part series from BBC which has already prompted some rumbles from historians including Allan Macinnes and Tom Devine.

"Oh aye," he responds breezily, describing concerns expressed so far about its alleged old-fashioned tone, anglocentricity – and not least the fact that it's being presented by an archaeologist rather than a historian – as "impressive, given that, at the time those opinions were aired, the series had neither been written or produced. It's a work in progress."

Unfazed by the academic concerns, he remarks: "These are men who have lived Scottish history for a long time. They've got strongly held opinions, but once they've seen the finished piece, we'll see what their opinions are then.

"But if it's controversial and ruffles feathers, good, because maybe a lot of people will watch it. I'm not an academic historian, I'm a professionally trained archaeologist, but archaeology has taken me into historical subjects from time to time. And if historians or whoever strongly disagree with me, well, fine."

The human stories from history clearly inspire him, thus his Amazing Tales …, which is illustrated by colour plates that, for those of a certain age, seem strangely familiar. "Yes, they're from Look and Learn," he beams, naming a popular if worthily educational children's magazine launched in the 1960s. "And Ladybird Books." But if the style of Oliver's story book is distinctly retro, its premise may be seen as even more old-fashioned – that such tales of old-fashioned, selfless, "hold the line" valour have been largely forgotten by recent generations, and this lack of heroic role models, particularly for boys, is to be regretted.

"It's not that I don't think we produce heroes any more," he stresses, as we sit in BBC Scotland's new headquarters at Victoria Quay, Glasgow, where he's recording a voice-over as resident "history man" on The One Show. "That's why I included the Penlee lifeboat men," he adds, referring to the tragic deaths of all eight of a Cornish lifeboat crew – as well as the eight crew and passengers of the vessel they were assisting, during a storm in 1981. "But these days the spotlight of celebrity is turned on something other than those people who attracted attention in the past. I think heroes appear when they are needed, in the way that they have done for the last 10,000 years, but we don't pay them enough attention."

So, come the hour, come the man – and we are talking only men here, but role models are sadly wanting, Oliver believes, and he also laments the passing of "traditional" occupations and the blurring of gender roles. "There was a time not so very long ago," he writes in the book's introduction, "when boys were taught to be men … if you were born male you learned skills and acquired a clear understanding of what being a man was all about. It was straight-forward, unquestioned, and it worked."

He goes on to argue that "part of the education of boys came from reading tales of brave and selfless deeds, or hearing from fathers and uncles and grandfathers about how other men had lived their lives, met their challenges, reached their goals and faced their deaths."

This generously coiffed presenter, archeologist and one-time journalist is 41, fit-looking and tanned, and although there is still a certain boyishness about him one is tempted to suspect there is a retired colonel somewhere in there, fighting to get out.

By this time, of course, today's new men may be throwing up their hands in horror, while women may be hastily revising their thoughts on the man who has been described as "a modern-day, long-haired Indiana Jones". And Oliver duly expects to be vilified from at least some quarters for his anthology, so apparently out of step with our times, although his fulminations have not been written entirely without tongue in cheek.

"The book is supposed to be inspirational up to a point, but it shouldn't really crop up in the self-help sections. It's not a lifestyle guide," he chuckles. "It should really be in there with the Commando comics and the annuals.These stories have excited me for 30 years, and I just felt the time had come when half of them at least had become unknown territory for nine to 12-year-old boys.

"It's a self-conscious attempt to throw down a gauntlet. I'd love it if people took up the cudgels over this because that would mean it was attracting attention. I don't expect everyone to agree with it – and I don't give a damn," he adds with a flash of cheeky insouciance. He genuinely believes, however, "that there used to be a way in which boys were educated. Along with learning to read and write and add up … I mean, I was taught to put my mother and sisters on the inside of the pavement, that sort of thing … there was a certain way in which boys were prepared for life. But now, there don't seem to be any clear-cut lines about what a boy is supposed to be and what a girl is supposed to be. I think in some way it was easier then, because even if you didn't agree with it, at least you knew what you were supposed to be or what you chose not to be."

"Being a proper British man," he writes in the book, "used to be about things like 'women and children first', 'hold the line' and 'play up, play up and play the game'." But didn't this supposed golden age of heroic manliness also mean a male-dominated society closing ranks on women expected to know their place?

"Of course," he acknowledges, with something approaching contrition. "I mean, that introduction is partly tongue-in-cheek, and partly I'm being self-consciously a sort of grumpy old man. But I do lament the lack of, say, apprenticeships. I know there are huge global economic reasons why we no longer build ships or mine coal, but their passing is still to be lamented."

Distant echoes of imperial bugles ring from some of these tales – Younghusband and the last of his red-tunicked heroes go under the tidal wave of Cetshwayo's Zulu warriors at the Battle of Isandlwana, the Birkenhead goes down with its band playing, the Glasgow-born Sir John Moore masterminds the British retreat to Corunna before being killed. And interspersed with these episodes is the saga of Captain Scott's fatal Antarctic expedition. Oliver insists, however, that he's not suggesting we rush out and start painting the map of the world pink all over again. The book, he says, is a celebration of courageous individuals, rather than any political forces which put them in harm's way.

But there is also the carnage of Dien Bien Phu, as French colonialism was bloodily eradicated in Vietnam, the flight of the Nez Pearce in the face of aggression and broken white man's promises, Neil Armstrong's bootprint in the lunar dust … "I don't think being heroic is inherently British. There are heroes everywhere, and I mean," he grins. "if someone wanted to bring out Amazing Tales for Making Women out of Girls … Its just that these stories are the ones that put the hairs up on the back of my neck."

Those closest to Oliver's heart are Isandlwana – a battle site on which he has worked extensively – Scott of the Antarctic, and the Penlee lifeboat tragedy. "Penlee is a story that I just find unbearable," he says. "Scott is the other one. I know that in the last 20 years some historians have said that he was a fool and he got himself into the situation, but I was still deeply moved by it.

When he told his wife, Trudi, about another episode, concerning a contingent of Legionnaires fighting to the bitter end against overwhelming odds during French imperialist adventuring in Mexico, he says her reaction was "stupid fools". So is hero worship of this nature very much a boy thing? "I don't think it is entirely," he says. "I would hope that girls would read it, or mothers or wives or whatever.

"When I used to watch the film Zulu, or The Cockleshell Heroes or whatever, I'd always think, 'Would I have done what they did, or would I have curled up into a little ball and wept?' I don't know."

He acknowledges that his has been a cosseted life. "Nothing particularly manly has been expected of me, not in the traditional sense. I'm not tarring other people with a brush that I wouldn't liberally apply to myself," he grins.

Not that he hasn't had his own fair share of adventure. As presenter of Coast, he has bounced about in small boats, taken to the air in microlites and biplanes, and "spent a lot of time in cold water", but he says his own feats of derring-do are strictly limited – especially now that he has three young children (the youngest born just hours after our interview) back home in Stirling with his wife.

"She's at home and I'm gallivanting about. It's a scoosh for me; it's her that's got the tough gig." It seems we're back to those clearly defined roles – perhaps it's Trudi who will end up writing that book about making girls into women.

• Amazing Tales for Making Men Out of Boys is published on 15 May by Penguin/Michael Joseph at £17.99

A HANDFUL OF HEROES
from Neil Oliver's Amazing Tales

The Penlee lifeboat disaster

ON the night of 19 December 1981, the lifeboat Solomon Browne – based at Penlee, Cornwall – was lost with all eight crew in a hurricane while trying to assist the coaster Union Star. The eight crew and passengers of the Union Star also perished.

Sir John Moore at Corunna

IN JANUARY 1809, during the Peninsular War, the Glasgow-born general and his men were forced to retreat to the Spanish port of Corunna where, though vastly outnumbered, they fought off a fierce attack by a French force. Though victorious, Moore was fatally wounded by a cannonball, and his burial was later marked by a poem by Charles Wolfe, once widely taught in schools.

The Foreign Legion at Camerone

"THE French Foreign Legion's Alamo" took place in 1863, during Napoleon III's imperial foray into Mexico. Some 60 Legionnaires, escorting a convoy, were cornered by a Mexican force of 2,000 at the derelict hamlet of Hacienda Camerón. The Legionnaires fought until only three were left alive – eventually being permitted by the Mexicans to surrender while keeping their arms.

The Cockleshell heroes

THE Cockleshell heroes were 12 Royal Marine Commandos who carried out an intrepid raid on German-occupied Bordeaux harbour in 1942, using two-man canoes. Limpet mines placed by the four who eventually got through caused major damage to enemy shipping, but two men were drowned and another six caught and executed.

The sinking of the Birkenhead

THE tradition of women and children first was established in 1852 when the troopship HMS Birkenhead struck an uncharted rock off the South African coast, in shark-infested seas. She was carrying some 600 men, some with families. Hundreds were drowned as they slept and the surviving officers and men dispatched seven women and 13 children in what lifeboats were operable. Despite suggestions that they swim for the boats, the men stood fast for fear of swamping them. Only 193 survivors were picked up next morning.