Historian David Olusoga to explore the social history of the gun at Cambridge Corn Exchange

Have you ever considered how a single weapon could change the course of history – and how these firearms influenced not just battles, but entire societies? Well, a new show featuring historian David Olusoga seeks to explore all that and more.

A Gun Through Time, which is set to come to Cambridge in November, will see David investigate the hidden stories behind three firearms that changed history – and how they are still relevant today.

“It’s a social history of weapons, it’s not a technical history, it’s certainly not a military history, but it is a story of how these weapons have changed the world and how they were part of the lives of our ancestors in ways that they’re not part of our lives,” explains David, whose television programmes include the BBC series A House Through Time and Union with David Olusoga.

“In some ways it is also about the fact that we’re very lucky to be from generations who don’t have contact with firearms. The same is not true for our ancestors.”

David adds: “Many countries in Europe have national service; we don’t, as a people, have contact with firearms –and that’s both historically and geographically unusual.

“Many generations before us had contact with firearms, and many of our closest neighbours have contact with firearms because they have national service: in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Switzerland…”

David is an experienced lecturer and published author. His books include Black and British: A Forgotten History and The World’s War: Forgotten Soldiers of Empire.

He says that the aim of this tour is “to try to bring two things together: to take some of what I do on television, which is presenting, which is using objects and places and locations and images and bring that to the stage; to not do a traditional lecture where you stand there and you read a script, but to do something which is much closer to a show, where there will be little bits of film, where there will be lots of photographs, and where there will be on stage these objects, these props, for storytelling – to tell how these guns changed the world.

“I could very easily write a lecture, but I wanted to actually have the objects on stage with me and use them as props.”

During the show, David will bring three well-known firearms onto the stage, each with its own world-changing story.

These are the Thompson sub-machine gun, also known as a ‘Chicago typewriter’, which transformed from a First World War ‘wonder weapon’ to the notorious ‘Tommy gun’ of Prohibition-era America; the Maxim gun, used to subdue African territories and also later used on the Western Front; and the Lee-Enfield rifle, the soldier’s companion in both World Wars.

“The thing which I think will surprise audiences is that the Maxim gun, invented in 1884, is still in use,” reveals David, who was born in Lagos, Nigeria, to a Nigerian father and a British mother. He grew up in his mother’s home town of Gateshead.

“It is the only one of these weapons [still in use]… I mean there are police forces in distant parts of the world that still use the Lee-Enfield – you’ll see them in remote places in Indian and Pakistan, for example.

“But the gun that is still used in warfare is the Maxim gun – the oldest of these guns.

“It is being used right now, as we speak, in trenches in positional warfare in Ukraine.

“There are people in their 20s using a gun that’s 120 years older than they are. It’s being used not just to try to hold back waves of Russian soldiers, it’s being used, amazingly, to shoot down drones.

“So the most high-tech piece of 21st century military equipment is being countered – or attempted to be countered – with a gun invented when Queen Victoria was on the throne.”

As well as the presentation aspect of the show, audiences will get the chance to ask David their own questions about the stories behind these guns.

He concludes: “It’s about how these guns were part of the lives of our ancestors, and that we’re very fortunate that they’re not part of our lives.

“I do wonder whether that privilege, of guns being an oddity and an unusual thing that we don’t encounter, will extend to our children.”

A respected historian, broadcaster, podcaster and filmmaker, David is also a professor of public history at the University of Manchester.

See A Gun Through Time at the Cambridge Corn Exchange on Saturday, 15 November. Tickets, priced £25-£43, are available from cornex.co.uk.