ASK anyone who’s even a month older than yourself about modern life, and they’ll likely tell you things were better “back in the day...”

It seems that viewing the past with rose-tinted glasses is nearly as stereotypically British a pastime as queuing and moaning about the weather. But what is it that fuels this nostalgic passion within us?

Ian Hislop, editor of satirical magazine Private Eye and team captain of Have I Got News For You, aims to find out with this new, three-part series.

He soon realises that the fascination with the past extends far beyond our living memories. “It’s clear that many of us in Britain are in love with the past.

Whether it’s swordcraft or Spitfires, mead or musketry, we relish harking back. But it’s not so much history we’re in love with as something rather less true but just as powerful: the ‘Olden Days’.”

He explains how throughout our past we have always plundered the history books in order to try to make sense of the present, using it as a context by which to judge the present and even predict the future.

Hislop draws on the work of Britain’s artists, everyone from minstrels and story-tellers to poets and painters, historians and architects, propagandists and pamphleteers over the past 1,000 years, to show just how much influence the olden days have always had over our lives. This, despite the fact that so much retrospection often ends up yielding results which are inaccurate, downright absurd, and sometimes very, very funny indeed.

He begins by examining the various spins which have been put on the lives of King Arthur and Alfred the Great throughout the ages. Hardly as topical as his HIGNFY material, but he makes it every bit as interesting.

He discovers how Arthur has been variously depicted as a wild Celtic warlord, a chivalric hero and a piously questing king, depending on who is telling the tale.

He visits Tintagel Castle, the fantastic Round Table at Winchester and even the sacred “burial place” of Arthur and Guinevere at Glastonbury Abbey.

We also hear how Alfred’s character has been manipulated to suit the purposes of tricky medieval lawyers, a Tudor archbishop and a Georgian Prince of Wales. Along the way he has become famous for all manner of great deeds, some of which may never have even happened.

So just how much stock can we put in the past, if the history books are written by people with a vested interest?