The history ‘lessons’ are done in animation. “One of our researchers came in one day and showed me an animated documentary called ‘What Barry Says’ by a guy called Simon Robson,” says Chris. “I watched it and it blew my mind. I said ‘We’ve got to have him’. I wrote him some scripts, he came out with some storyboards, and I said ‘yeah’. Simple as that. He did them over a year, in his bedroom. They are very hard hitting. It’s a very good way of doing history. The last thing we wanted was some guy wearing a wig doing some sort or reconstruction.”
Chris is aware of the irony of the fact that we are living in a country which is free enough to allow him to release a film which severely criticises the government for eroding our civil liberties. “I’m not saying that we’re living in a totalitarian police state yet,” he says, in answer to this. “But we are at the top of a very slippery slope, and we’re moving in that direction. We have to do something about it, because we don’t want to be living in a situation when it’s too late, and we won’t be able to protest about it, because all our rights have gone.”
I ask him the motives of the government. Are they Machiavellian puppeteers, moulding a new totalitarian society? “Not since David Blunkett left the cabinet,” he jokes. “The worst thing about it is that the government believe what they are doing is for the good of the people. They are not trying to create a police state because they want more power. They genuinely believe that by imprisoning people without trial and allowing torture, they are actually protecting us from terrorism. CS Lewis said it all: ‘Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive’.”