145: Ben Marsh

My guest this week is Ben Marsh, Reader in History at the University of Kent, and very well known for the Marsh Family musical videos which inspired so many people during and since lockdown. Ben talks about how people have been craving something authentic and we learn what it was like to perform live on Comic Relief, meeting (nearly) Richard Curtis and being watched by people one has constructed one’s world around.

Ben reflects on how some people will see in the videos whatever it is that reinforces their cultural world and how the videos have endeavoured to bring people together. Music can reach people and enable us to escape tribalism. We talk about copyright issues and find out about the inspiration for some of the music.

We learn about Ben’s research on histories of failure and how he very nearly didn’t become an academic. He couldn’t study History at school, but we learn that something about colonial America clicked for him. We talk about going back to the music or films that mattered to us when young, and how we need people to validate our passions.

Ben talks about ornaments that his late grandmother hoarded and how much we tend to value an archive. We discuss keeping records relating to the pasts, and misremembering the past, and the significance of blurry pictures of a Labrador on a school trip to the Isle of Wight.

We discover how Ben got into academia and the art of retro-articulating one’s life and how he feels differently about his research post-2016. Ben also speaks about how most people are historians more than they perhaps realize.

Then, at the end of the interview, we talk about the selection of positive memories and what we do with negativity and positivity, and how we share our journey with other people. We also learn that Ben gets to look back professionally but otherwise is a looking forward person.

Please note: Opinions expressed are solely those of Chris Deacy and Ben Marsh and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the University of Kent.