There is a new theme park coming to Britain – though without big dippers and ghost trains. It will be an historical attraction with Vikings, knights and Tommy Atkins in the trenches.
It will be Britain’s equivalent of the wildly popular Puy du Fou, a historical theme park in western France which opened in 1989 and now pulls in nearly three million visitors a year.
The Sunday Times reported this week that the French company behind Puy du Fou has plans to open a £300 million British version in Oxfordshire. The paper spoke to Olivier Strebelle, Puy du Fou’s chief executive, who said: ‘We have our guests travel through time, out of [the] Roman period and into the 20th century period of the great wars.’
Strebelle added that the theme park would be for ‘local people’. What does that mean? Most likely that it will unashamedly and unapologetically showcase British history the old-fashioned way: with heroes and battles and bravado.
That is what the Puy du Fou does in France, and that is why the theme park is despised by the progressive elite.
Just this week a French economist, Pierre Rondeau, a former advisor to the Socialist party, launched a scathing attack on the theme park and its millions of visitors.‘The Puy du Fou is when meathead-land meets country bumpkin-land at the crossroads of a library, and they feel they’ve learned something,’ he sneered on radio.
Puy du Fou is in the news in France because of its surprise omission from the government’s ‘Culture Pass’. This is a scheme whereby under 18s receive a small grant to spend on books, concerts, museums or other activities deemed cultural. These include going to the Fête de l’Humanité, an annual left-wing jamboree that blends music with politics, or enjoying an Escape Game. It does not include a trip to the Puy du Fou, to the anger and amazement of many conservative politicians.
In response, the Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati, has promised to investigate why the Puy du Fou was omitted from the initiative.
Don’t bother. The Puy du Fou has been the progressives’ bête noire for years. Its founder is Philippe de Villiers, a former conservative minister, whose brother, Pierre, resigned as head of the French armed forces in 2017 after a blazing row with Emmanuel Macron over budget cuts.
The de Villiers boys are proud of their country and its culture and history, unlike their president, who famously declared in 2017 that ‘there is no such thing as French culture’.
Puy du Fou has been criticised by left-leaning historians, who accuse of it ‘rewriting’ history, a charge dismissed by the theme park. It claims that, on the contrary, it recounts some of the stories that have been airbrushed out of French history: such as the massacres committed in western France in the 1790s by revolutionary troops. The most notorious was at Lucs-sur-Boulogne, a village 30 miles from Puy du Fou where, in 1794 nearly 600 people, including over a hundred children, were slaughtered on the orders of Maximilien de Robespierre.
Although schoolchildren in France are taught about what the Nazis did to the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane in 1944, they rarely learn of the similar atrocity committed at Lucs-sur-Boulogne. Why not? Because it doesn’t fit the left-wing narrative of the ‘glorious’ revolution. The chorus of the Marseillaise declares ‘May impure blood Water our fields!’ but many French do not like celebrating in song the wholesale slaughter of women and children.
Even today some left-wing MPs celebrate the birthday of Robespierre, ignoring the bloody ‘Terror’ he unleashed on France.
In 2022 the left-wing Liberation newspaper denounced Puy du Fou for its ‘right-wing ideological content’ and said it was time for a left-wing equivalent. It suggested as themes, the Enlightenment, the Revolution, ‘or the history of the struggle for equality.’
The right roared with laughter. Who would want to visit a theme park where you could learn about the deconstruction of white middle-aged males, asked one magazine. Although it conceded that a ‘Robespierre’ attraction might appeal to a certain progressive type who would enjoy seeing wrong thinkers being cancelled at the guillotine.
It does make one wonder how Britain’s progressives will welcome their own Puy du Fou. Most regard Britain’s history as ‘shameful’, as the Guardian frequently lectures us, a message which appeared to be endorsed by Keir Starmer when he removed paintings of Elizabeth I and Sir Walter Raleigh from 10 Downing street shortly after becoming PM. They were replaced by Portuguese artworks celebrating strong women.
Last October, Kemi Badenoch accused Labour of planning to teach Britain’s children to be ‘ashamed’ of their history, and a group of prominent historians recently expressed concern over proposed reforms to the school curriculum, saying that it ‘emphatically shifts the balance from education to indoctrination’.
The French Puy du Fou is not right wing and nor does it rewrite history; it conjures up France’s past in an exciting and dramatic style that appeals to the public. The British version will surely have the same success, providing it takes it inspiration from Agincourt and the Armada, and not the Guardian.
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