Being interested in all historical periods  –  and the closer to the present day, the better  – I always enjoy her programmes.

 She has drawn criticism for her liking of dressing up.  The clarity of her expositions make the costume changes unnecessary, but they do not put me off.

Her current series about the biggest fibs and myths about the history of the USA is a brave exercise. This is especially true of the latest episode, broadcast on 31st January.

She showed how :
the Great American Dream, concocted by Hollywood in the 1950s, when racial segregation was rife throughout the country and lynchings were still taking place in the southern states;

the McCarthy hearings (“Are you, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party)and  the reds-under-the-bed paranoia of that era;

the nuclear  arms build-up, which powered the arms race, justified by intelligence that the Soviet Union had more bombs than the US;

the Cuban missile crisis and President Kennedy’s “heroic” resolution of the problem.

Were all based on plain perfidy on the part of the CIA and the US the State Department; lies galore

There was nothing in the programme which has not been known for a long time by many of us on the Left and in the peace movement, or by readers of the blockbuster book by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznik, the Secret History of the United States.

But how did she get this political dynamite past the filtering bosses of the B BC?

It is a pity that, although broadcast at prime time, it was on BBC4, rather than BBC1.

How I wish the entire population of Britain and the USA would see it!