'It's designed to belittle Britain and its leaders'

Education Secretary Michael Gove has launched an attack on Blackadder for peddling left-wing 'myths' about the First World War.

He said the Rowan Atkinson sitcom – written by Richard Curtis and Ben Elton – was part of an intellectual movement 'designed to belittle Britain and its leaders' and 'denigrate virtues such as patriotism, honour and courage'.

Writing in the Daily Mail, he said: 'It’s important that we don’t succumb to some of the myths which have grown up about the conflict in the last 70 or so years.

'The conflict has, for many, been seen through the fictional prism of dramas such as Oh! What a Lovely War, The Monocled Mutineer and Blackadder, as a misbegotten shambles – a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite.

'Even to this day there are Left-wing academics all too happy to feed those myths.'

He says the war was for a just cause against an 'aggressively expansionist' German regime and added: 'Historians have skilfully demonstrated how those who fought were not dupes but conscious believers in king and country.'

Gove has been trying to rewrite the national history curriculum in schools, but was forced to abandon several plans after being criticised for focusing too much on British history at the expense of the wider global view.

Published: 4 Jan 2014