In 1956, when Tony Robinson left his Essex grammar school with just four O-levels, few would have predicted he would become one of our greatest polymaths, ending up with seven honorary degrees. He has also inspired generations to take an interest in history, via his role as Baldrick in Blackadder, hosting Time Team and his Cunningcast history podcast, presenting numerous documentaries and writing 18 children’s history books. In 2013, he received a knighthood for public and political service.
Now, aged 79, Robinson is publishing his first novel, The House of Wolf, one of a planned trilogy about Alfred the Great. Robinson enthuses about the King of Wessex who not only defeated the Danes but also reformed our currency and our legal system. The book’s a blockbuster, featuring dozens of characters from slave girls to the Pope and featuring locations all across Europe.
“It was ridiculous hubris for a first-time novelist having so many balls in the air. When I started there was a feeling of imposter syndrome,” he tells me.
Imposter syndrome or not, the novel became the subject of a 10-way bidding war between publishers. It’s just another incidence of Robinson being late to the party, but then becoming dazzlingly successful. From a lower middle-class background, he was a jobbing actor until he was 38, watching from the sidelines as Oxbridge graduates produced the sort of comedy that then dominated British culture.
‘Rowan was intellectually very generous’: Rowan Atkinson and Robinson in Blackadder – BBC
He remembers watching That Was the Week That Was in his teens. “I thought, ‘How could they have created this when they don’t even know me?’ I wanted to be part of that world and thought I could make a contribution. I wrote literally thousands of letters to producers, but nothing ever came of it.”
It was years later when, out of the blue, he was offered the part of Baldrick in the pilot of a new show by Not the Nine O’Clock News superstar Rowan Atkinson, written by Atkinson’s Oxford crony Richard Curtis and produced by former Cambridge-Footlighter John Lloyd. “Something like nine people had turned Baldrick down because he only had about eight lines and none of them were funny, but I didn’t care. These were my people and I just wanted to be with them.”
Entering Blackadder’s rehearsal room, with this gilded crowd, was intoxicating. “They were all incredibly bright and dazzling, it was an experience I’d never had, although I imagine it had been common to them since public school. I felt partly intimidated and partly very punchy.”
The punchiness manifested itself in Robinson reminding his colleagues constantly that he was a decade older and far more streetwise than them. He recalls: “Stephen Fry once said to me, ‘If you play the card of the university of the streets one more time, I will scream.’”
Atkinson has a reputation for being “difficult”. Tom Baker was just one fellow cast member who described him as “so anxious he wasn’t very fun to work with”. Yet Robinson insists he’ll be forever indebted to both Atkinson and Lloyd. “What they both allowed me constantly to do was have that cutaway, sharp shot of Baldrick’s reaction, where his attitude was the audience’s attitude. Rowan was intellectually very generous and only ever wanted what was best for the show. He would have a gag, and then I would say something which undermined it. You’ve got to be really secure if you’re the star, to allow a secondary performer to do that and get the applause. If I’d done the same show but with a different group of people I’d still be doing small plays in pubs, so thank you, Rowan.”
Blackadder Goes Forth: Tim McInnerny, Rowan Atkinson, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie and Tony Robinson – Radio Times
Blackadder ended in 1989 after four series. Robinson has said previously that, by then, “the team weren’t really talking to each other”. Today, he doesn’t expand on this, but merely says that they “aren’t really” in touch and he doubts it will return. “Tim McInnerny [who played Percy and Darling] is the most articulate about this. He says, ‘If we made Blackadder again, even if it was objectively better, inevitably people would say it’s not as good as it used to be.’ I don’t know whether that’s true or not, I’d happily do another one just because I enjoyed it.”
When we talk, Robinson is staying with his third wife Louise – he has an adult son and daughter, historical novelist Laura Shepherd-Robinson, as well as two granddaughters – at their second home in Spain. Over Zoom, then the phone after a power cut kills the broadband, he proves to be hyper-articulate, briskly pleasant and exudes a well-deserved confidence, even if some chippiness persists.
Robinson pictured with his wife Louise in London in 2017 – Dave Benett
Earlier this month, he complained how being 5ft 4in “had been a problem in life”, saying: “Smart women who wouldn’t pick out the fact that they didn’t want… I don’t know… to be married to a red-haired man or a Jew or a blind person or anything else, will laugh with their friends and say, ‘Oh God, he’s got to be taller than me.’”
He has also recalled how Victoria Wood once told him: “You and I could be Romeo and Juliet. The only reason we’ll both have to do comedy is that I’m a big girl and you’re a little bloke.” I say to him that stature doesn’t seem to have held back the likes of Tom Cruise (reportedly 5ft 7in) or Al Pacino (5ft 6in).
“There are quite a few wooden soap boxes people have to stand on in Hollywood,” Robinson replies, but declines to discuss the subject further, explaining that he prefers to focus on his book.
Robinson, pictured at Coin Laundry, became a household name in Blackadder – Rii Schroer
Robinson was born in London in 1946, the adored only child of a typist mother and a father who worked for London County Council. His acting career began aged 13 when he played one of Fagin’s urchins in the original West End production of Oliver!, getting to know its creator Lionel Bart. “All the men I knew smelled of sweat, he was the first man I ever met who wore aftershave and was very gentle. To me he was the English Cole Porter, who never achieved the universal respect he deserved.”
Periods in children’s TV followed (most notably Play Away) and he even had a bit part on the John Wayne film Brannigan which was filmed in London. Robinson’s career has taken many diversions. His involvement in Blackadder led to an unexpected swerve, with Channel 4 approaching him to host Time Team, a new show about archaeology.
“They thought, ‘Who can we get to present a programme about a subject so arcane no one can even spell it? Why don’t we get someone famous for being the stupidest person in history?’” They were unaware that Robinson was something of an expert, having taken an extramural course in the subject after befriending archaeologists on a nearby dig when he was working at Chichester Festival Theatre.
Tony Robinson holding a mammoth tooth while presenting Time Team – Channel 4
Time Team was a huge hit, running for nearly two decades. It was cancelled in 2013 partly because each episode cost around £200,000 to make. “But there was always a debate about whether a lot of old men pontificating was on message for Channel 4. I always wanted a female link-presenter alongside me, because it did feel very male-oriented but it didn’t really work out for everyone.”
Other gigs included presenting the hugely affecting 2006 Channel 4 documentary Me And My Mum about his mother’s dementia, the disease which also killed his father. People still contact him with harrowing experiences of the condition, but he’s upbeat. “I’d always believed we would find a cure for dementia and rather like Aids-HIV, it’s turned out to be much more complex than we thought, but also, rather like Aids-HIV, there now seems to be a huge acceleration of our understanding of what dementia is and how we can combat it.”
In other respects, Robinson’s more pessimistic. He’s been a lifelong vocal Labour supporter, who spent four years on its national executive committee, even if he quit the party for a year in 2019, citing anti-Semitism, the muddled response to Brexit and Jeremy Corbyn’s poor leadership. After the last election, he attended a party at No 10 to thank him for campaigning at the last election, but will only say now he’s vowed to make no comment about our current government until it’s been 18 months in power.
What then about anti-Semitism, an even hotter potato now than during Corbyn’s leadership, as a result of the conflict in Gaza? Robinson, who’s not Jewish, but has Jewish heritage, chooses his words carefully. “I’d say there are a series of enormous problems about people not understanding the background of the various crises going on around the world. There’s not a lot of room for nuance on TikTok, but don’t take a position unless you can understand the context.”
The House of Wolf by Tony Robinson (Sphere, £25) will be published on September 11
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