‘Trump Takes on the World’ shows why a visceral recording of history is important

If journalism is the first draft of history then documentaries are surely the second and as necessary as the first, writes Mary Dejevsky

The rapid turnover of officials under Trump has provided a long list of people prepared to talk – a recipe for documentary gold (AFP/Getty)

It is 30 years since a small British production company completed what was to become the first of a very particular brand of television documentary. The Second Russian Revolution, produced by Norma Percy for Brook Lapping, chronicled Mikhail Gorbachev’s attempts to reform the Soviet Union through the eyes of those who made the decisions as a country, and a whole system, spiralled out of control.

Since then, the same partnership has produced dozens of memorable TV documentaries, painstakingly constructed from eyewitness accounts of recent history. But their latest, Trump Takes on the World, may be the closest in spirit and substance to their first, not least because of the sense it conveys that everything, every day, is in flux and that the humans – for better or worse – can affect what happens, but not always in the way they intend.

The last of three parts airs on BBC Two next Wednesday (24 February). Thereafter, as the BBC will not hesitate to tell you, it will be available on the BBC iPlayer.

The trademark Brook Lapping technique is to splice together different first-person accounts, illustrating how the same event or predicament appears at the time to the people who were there, and why they might then have acted as they did. But it is not just technique that matters – punctilious and exhaustive though that is – timing matters crucially too, and this is another strength that connects the Russia and Trump films across the decades.

Interviewees have to be close enough in time to the events in question to remember what it was really like to be there – not just what the official transcript of such and such a press conference or meeting says happened. Yet they also need enough distance to appreciate at least something of the historical significance of what was going on. They will most likely be out of power, so with less incentive to play politics or lie, but not so long out of power that the history has “set” into a fixed version. The personal triumphs, the wounds and the defeats need to be fresh. If they are, then you are on the way to documentary gold.

The Trump White House was a natural for such a format. The rapid turnover of officials provided a long list of people prepared to talk. The president’s own character and unpredictability made for roller-coaster drama without any need for embellishment. What is more, very senior foreign dignitaries seemed almost to be queuing up to tell how it was for them. Indiscretion on the part of the top man, it would seem, begets indiscretion down the line. Not one of these erstwhile players, it would appear, had the slightest expectation that Donald Trump’s path and theirs would ever cross again.

As with all Brook Lapping documentaries, the spirit is not one of recrimination or of preaching how things could, maybe should, have been otherwise, but of finding out what happened in the room. Trump Takes on the World is neither Trump-bashing nor Trump-apologia.

From a purely parochial, British, perspective, the passages about Theresa May’s ill-judged rush to the White House are as engrossing as they are cringe-making – but not entirely to Trump’s disadvantage. After all, what is a US president to do, when casually informed during lunch with the British PM, that the leader of Russia called sometime before, but was told by an official to try again later? Trump was surely within his rights to object that, as he put it, the one person with the power to destroy the United States was not put through to him at once. Then you have May’s very human concern about what her husband would think of Trump holding her hand. Not only her husband, I would suggest, but a large number of British voters as well.

Those who dealt with Trump most successfully, it emerges, appealed to his business and showbiz background. The desert spectacle staged by the Saudis was perfection. Emmanuel Macron showed the same understanding when he invited the Trumps as guests of honour to France’s Bastille Day parade. Back in the White House, however, it became clear just how hard some individuals – from the irascible John Bolton as national security adviser to certain members of the top brass – felt it was their job to protect the president from himself (or rather, perhaps, that they knew better and should get their way). That this meant trying to thwart policies that an elected president had campaigned on – such as withdrawing troops from the Middle East - should give pause for thought.

But enough of the content. You can watch the programmes and reach your own judgement about the goings-on during four years that already seem long in the past. The point is that Trump Takes on the World, like The Second Russian Revolution, and like so many Brook Lapping productions (and those of their imitators) fulfil a serious purpose.

If journalism is the first draft of history – written and photographed by those who were there, but had no way of knowing how the story would end – then documentaries, built on divergent eye-witness perspectives, while memories are still fresh, are surely the second, and as necessary as the first.

For the UK, the chapter of history from David Cameron’s decision to hold the EU referendum to the actual completion of Brexit will be studied and assessed – justifiably – for decades to come, even as instant histories are already on the shelves. It is far too soon, however, to banish the actual experience, which is why the project recently embarked upon by the London-based think tank, Britain in a Changing Europe, deserves recognition and success.

The idea is to build up a comprehensive archive – the Brexit Witness Archive – of interviews with as many of the players in the Brexit process as will agree. Such living testimony is always worth preserving – I am among many, many people interviewed for an Imperial War Museum project on memories of the Cold War. But it is now essential more than ever, when so many communications are ephemeral, when records held digitally can be destroyed by the touch of a wrong key (as happened with thousands of Home Office police records), and when by no means all ministerial and prime ministerial meetings are minuted (Tony Blair and the Iraq War).

One unexpected aspect of the Brexit project – unexpected even to the think tank’s director Anand Menon – is the venom that his fledgeling archive attracted even before it had released its first dozen interviews. Remainers attacked Brexiteers for not answering pertinent questions; Brexiteers returned the compliment. It is to be hoped that something of this response will also be included in the archive, if only to illustrate the continued rawness of emotions even after Boris Johnson “got Brexit done”.

And this is my final point. Any history worth the name needs to include the first, journalistic draft, then recent memory, and considered retrospective judgement, and technology makes it possible to have all three. But I would make a plea for the first and the second not to be lost as memory fades. Scholars are now writing histories of the Soviet Union’s collapse. Those that have passed my desk are rarely inaccurate, factually. All too often, though, the reader is left with no feel whatsoever for how it was; no sense of the ever-shifting context, the competing interests, the personalities, the passions, the choices, or indeed the perception – maybe false with hindsight – that there were none.

It is said that those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it. But it is important to know not just what happened and when, but why people behaved and took the decisions they did, and what the world felt and looked like to them at the time.