Sometimes the path to thanksgiving is a rocky one — as Americans have learned over and over this year. There’s nothing like losing things you take for granted to make you appreciate the things that remain.
In the case of Ruth Goodman, giving up the trappings of the modern world is a choice, one she’s been making for decades: She is a British historian living in Wales who specializes in re-creating domestic life as it might have been lived anywhere from 60 to 400 years ago. Goodman — most often alongside archaeologists Alex Langlands and Peter Ginn — has spent a full year each in the Middle Ages, in the Victorian period, in the Edwardian period, and in Great Britain during World War II. Filmed by the BBC, those series have now made their way to Amazon Prime and other streaming services in this country, just in time to offer refuge from life in 2020.
Goodman was kind enough to entertain an interview request from a newspaper in a state she probably never knew existed, and her story seemed a perfect way to celebrate a Thanksgiving unlike anything we could have imagined.
ACT I: THE HISTORY
“I was extremely lucky to be brought up by two intelligent, practical and fully engaged parents who regularly took us camping all across Europe and discussed everything that we encountered, from architecture to wild flowers, tapestries to baguettes,” begins Goodman, who was born in 1963. “School by contrast was rather pedestrian, and I soon learned that my intellectual life was one that had to be pursued independently from formal institutions. The negative side of that, of course, was that I became a very poor student, simply going through the motions, and my academic record at both school and university is indeed lack lustre.
“The man that I fell in love with, and married, had been a reenactor since he was 12 years old,” she goes on. “He quickly roped me in to his hobby, and I soon discovered that although I had no interest whatsoever in the re-fighting of old battles, I was absolutely fascinated by the details of daily life. Together we shifted our focus, eventually forming our own renactment group, gathering together others who shared a passionate interest in detailed research and accurate representations and moving away from the more carefree and loose interpretations that are the norm within the world of historical re-enactment.”
When her daughters Eve and Katherine were born, Goodman left her day job and “started to concentrate upon building a small ‘historical’ business using and developing the research that the hobby had inspired.”
“Before the telly found me, I was lucky enough to work with several leading museums, historical houses and perhaps most excitingly, the Globe Theatre, concentrating upon the detail of the lived experience and finding ways of communicating the research to wider audiences,” she explains. “I produced things, clothes, for example, that were worn on stage; I demonstrated techniques and methodologies, such as spit roasting or charcoal burning; I ran courses and put together exhibitions; trained staff and volunteers at historic sites; and provided consultancy in manners, movement and meaning for stage and screen.”
The television work came, she says, “out of the blue.”
“The new genre of ‘reality’ programs had just begun to take off, and companies were looking for people with historical skills,” she remembers. “I don’t think that there were very many of us for them to choose from. I initially said ‘no thanks,’ but they were persistent and eventually I gave in.”
ACT II: ON TELEVISION
“It is important to remember that ‘reality’ TV is still TV,” Goodman emphasizes. “On small-budget British programs, which all of ours were — very small shoestring budgets by the way — filming in real time is not an option. With one, or maybe at a pinch, two people to operate cameras, every action has to be repeated in order to produce shots of faces, then hands doing things, then the wider context. The whole thing is a construct. The final effect may well appear to be a seamless reality of a life lived, but the experience of making such programs is very much dominated by the technical requirements of the filming process. I found it enormously helpful to be able to draw upon many years of experience away from the cameras, where I could go at my own pace and fully concentrate upon the work in hand.”
In the various series, Goodman is seen doing everything from churning butter to beating feather beds to turning a sheep’s head into stew. She says most of it didn’t faze her — not using pig stomachs to seal a jar, not cooking a cow tongue, not plucking a turkey — and many times, the scenes were her suggestion.
“Only once did I find myself outside my comfort zone, and that came when we were filming ‘Tudor Monastery Farm’ and went eel fishing,” she says, never hesitant to laugh at herself as viewers are well aware. “I have a snake phobia. I have prepared, cooked and eaten eels before and was not really concerned about the scene beforehand. But when some eels climbed out of the barrel into the base of the small boat that we were in and began moving towards me, I freaked and would have jumped into the lake in full Tudor gear, corset and all, had the very kind chap who was rowing the boat not seen my panic and grabbed them!
“We then rowed quickly back to shore where I had a cup of tea and sit-down while my heart rate slowed. And if that sounds too pathetic for words, I would like to add that our director, who was also in the boat filming me — as I said, we were a very small crew, often with no dedicated camera person — was in nearly as bad a state as I was! You can see me freeze in the resultant footage if you know what you are looking for.”
ACT III: MODERN TIMES
Asked how her experiences in living history have affected her modern life, Goodman says she finds “that quite hard to unpick.”
“It has certainly made me very appreciative of certain modern conveniences, some of which people tend to take for granted — the common sink drain, for example,” she says. “If you have had to carry every drop of water into the house and then also carry every drop of dirty water back out again, you come to adore the ability to simply pull the plug and watch it all drain away. Washing machines are also fabulous. In my opinion, they may well be more important in the liberation of women than the contraceptive pill. I am also in love with central heating and modern medicine.
“Mobile phones, however, you can keep,” she adds. “And you are welcome too to ‘air freshener,’ leaf blowers, amplified music, jeans and fizzy pop. A lot of the things that I like best about historical living chime closely with sustainable eco living, using less and recycling more, being more thoughtful about your life and less influenced by advertising. How much of this I would have come to without the history, I don’t know.”
And asked finally what she hopes viewers take away from her work — which also includes numerous books, the most recent of which was just published in this country in October — Goodman doesn’t hesitate with her answer.
“Obviously, I would hope that those who watch or read my work will enjoy the experience, that they will find it interesting, but I do also rather hope that people will feel a little emboldened, a little more confident in asking questions and giving things a try,” she says. “Modern life is so dominated by organizations and companies that seek to make us passive, into nothing more than consumers and receivers of wisdom. I would like to nudge people towards a more active and independent way of thinking and living.
“Nothing in life is actually fixed. History tells us that there have been many, many other ways of doing things, other opinions, and other ways of life. The words ‘but we have always done it like this’ turn out to be just not true. Wherever and whenever you look in history and across the globe, you find constant flux and continual change. History is a lesson in alternatives, something to help you think about the present and where you want to go in the future.”
Read more about it
Ruth Goodman
Books
“The Domestic Revolution: How the Introduction of Coal Into Victorian Homes Changed Everything” (Just released in the U.S. in October by W.W. Norton & Co.) “How to Behave Badly in Renaissance Britain” (2018) (The U.S. version is titled “How to Behave Badly in Elizabethan England”) “How to Be a Tudor” (2015) “How to Be a Victorian” (2013)
Television
The Living History series aired on the BBC, some with accompanying books: “Tales From the Green Valley” (2005 with Peter Ginn, Alex Langlands, Chloe Spencer and Stuart Peachey) “Victorian Farm” (2008 with Ginn and Langlands) and a book of same name written by the trio “Edwardian Farm” (2010 with Ginn and Langlands) and a book of same title written by the trio “Victorian Pharmacy” (2010 with Nick Barber and Tom Quick) “Wartime Farm” (2012 with Ginn and Langlands) and a book of same title written by the trio “Tudor Monastery Farm” (2013 with Ginn and Tom Pinfold) and a book of same title written by the trio “Secrets of the Castle” (2014 with Ginn and Pinfold) “Full Steam Ahead” (2016 with Ginn and Langlands) and a book of same title written by the trio
Becca Martin-Brown is Features editor for the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. She can be reached by email at bmartin@ nwadg.com or on Twitter @nwabecca.
