Andrew Marr with Anne Sloman and the Rt Rev Graham James, Bishop of Norwich. Picture: Malcolm Robertson

BBC presenter Andrew Marr spoke about a wide range of issues relating to history as he gave the annual Sharrington Lecture in North Norfolk.

Andrew Marr signing copies of his new book at All Saints’ Sharrington. Picture: Jan McFarlane

The man who fronted the BBC’s History of the World and The Diamond Queen was at All Saints’ Church in Sharrington, near Holt, at an event on Friday chaired by the Bishop of Norwich the Rt Rev Graham James.

It is organised each year by Anne Sloman, chairman of the Church of England’s Church Buildings Council, and a member All Saints’ Church. Proceeds from the lecture go towards the upkeep of All Saints.

Mr Marr praised the “Diamond Queen” for the stability she brings to political life.

He commented that as prime ministers come and go, the Queen offers a long-term view, a sense of history and a knowledge of the world leaders she has met personally.

Mr Marr observed it is a role which is rarely understood by those who like to think she has no voice in our political life.

He talked about the making of the History of the World and said he hoped it would bring history alive for a new generation in a way that the pictures in the ‘Ladybird Books’ series had first stirred an interest of history in him as a child.

He hoped too that it would help to tell the “long story” at a time when many were specialists of a particular period in history but with less understanding of the whole picture.

Mr Marr aimed to mix the familiar stories with those which were more unfamiliar, encouraging people to understand that Julius Caesar, for example, was a mass murderer as well as a great hero; and that Cleopatra was less a “saucy baggage” and more a cunning politician.