Post-imperial Drama: History, Memory and Narrative in Peter Kosminsky's The Promise

Abstract

Historical television drama enjoys a privileged place in the mediation of collective, national memory as it imaginatively transports viewers from their living rooms to the time/place of earlier events. It may contest existing narratives of the nation and challenge viewers to re-think the stories told of how we arrived at the current moment. This article addresses these questions of memory and national histories through analysis of Peter Kosminsky's four-part series, The Promise (Channel 4, 2011). It tells the ‘untold’ story of the British in postwar Palestine. It comprises two parallel stories of Len Matthews, a paratrooper deployed in 1945 to Palestine, and his granddaughter, Erin, who, in the present, visits Israel whilst reading Len's diary. Through these characters, the complex, conflictual histories of the British in Palestine and the aftermath of imperial powers in the region are dramatically played out. This article approaches The Promise as post-imperial drama, that is, as a fiction based on the contested, half-forgotten, sometimes denied facts of British imperialism, and one which seeks to intervene in such post-imperial amnesia. In doing so, the article contributes to debates around British national identities and the imaginative representation of history on British television.