The Mary Rose story shows how history has now come alive

Iwas just six years old, glued to the television screen along with 60 million people around the world, as that distinctive, bespoke yellow cradle gradually emerged from the depths of the Solent, bringing Mary Rose’s fragile skeletal timber remains to the surface after 437 years on the seabed. The sense of history being made and rediscovered was palpable.

Yesterday, 34 years on, I saw the ship unveiled again, on show as never before after an astonishing refit to its purpose-built museum. Once again I became that six-year-old, the hairs on the back of my neck raised by the thrill of having history brought within touching distance: the glass that had separated the ship from its audience removed at last.

That change is fitting, for in the decades since 1982, history has been brought gloriously into view, out of the library and the university lecture hall and into the public domain, to be experienced and engaged with as never before. As Mary Rose has been made ready for its 21st-century audience, so too have historic houses and heritage sites across the country. No longer is history a “them” and “us” experience, preserved beyond velvet ropes, locked doors, and “Do not touch” signs.

Now the barriers are coming down; guides in period costume wander corridors, drawing visitors into worlds previously hidden away. When some years ago the then chairman of the National Trust, Simon Jenkins, claimed that “there are things to learn from Disney”, feathers were ruffled. But he had his finger on the pulse, rightly identifying a desire to entertain as well as educate in order to make history “come alive”.

Today, history has become big business. Sites such as Hampton Court, Dover Castle or the Tower of London now have the pulling power of Disneyland, drawing audiences young and old.

And that is no bad thing. New technologies are being used to tell stories of the past. At the Mary Rose museum in Portsmouth, films recreate the lives of crew members playing, working or fighting, fruit of cutting-edge marine archaeology that recovered more than 19,000 artefacts, including weapons, clothes and even a backgammon set. The Richard III Visitor Centre in Leicester tells the story of that remarkable quest to find the medieval king and his journey to and from the car park – another historical discovery that captured the popular imagination.

The argument about popular history’s place has been won. Done well, it grabs the headlines, creates national talking points and unmissable things to do and see, read or watch. Whether it be Radio 4’s groundbreaking History of the World in a 100 Objects, the remarkable sensation that is Horrible Histories, Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall on stage, screen and on the page, the television series Who Do You Think You Are? or the award-winning documentary film Night will Fall, history now comes in many forms at once rigorous and authentic, popular and compelling.

Above all it is immersive, to be experienced and to be made witness to; it is dynamic and evolving and speaks to us as much about now as then. There has never been a better time to be a historian, young, old, professional or amateur. And that we so celebrate history is to all our credit. Anna Whitelock is Director of the London Centre for Public History and author of ‘Mary Tudor’