He first hit our screens as a double act with his famous father, but now Dan Snow is going it alone. He tells Steve Pratt he's looking forward to next month's Yorvik Festival

HISTORIAN Dan Snow's television career was almost scuppered by his father, TV presenter and swingometer expert Peter Snow, before it even began.

He was at university - Balliol College, Oxford, studying modern history - when a BBC camera crew came to film him during the Boat Race. He rowed three times against Cambridge, was in the winning 2000 team and captained the team the following year.

"The BBC came to film a video diary.

I showed the camera crew around and talked about history," he recalls. "Then someone back in the BBC development department said why didn't me and my dad do a programme together? But dad said it was a rubbish idea.

"The same person came back a few months later and suggested it again, by which time I'd finished university and dad said yes. We did a pilot and went on from there."

Dan, 29, is now a regular presenter on the box, with and without his famous father.

"I never dreamt in my life I'd be doing this," he says of his flourishing TV career. On the night before we spoke, I'd seen him picking leeks, among a variety of other jobs, on the BBC programme What Britain Earns. This, too, was presented alongside his dad although, more usually, they front history programmes.

There was a documentary marking the 60th anniversary of the battle of El Alamein, followed by a eight-part, Baftawinning series for BBC2, Battlefield Britain, followed by a series on 20th Century Battlefields.

Dan also won a Sony award as one of the presenters on LBC Boat Race coverage.

Continuing the water theme, he found time to sail across the Atlantic with his father, captaining the boat on the return leg.

The pair match each other well on screen. Working with his dad was a help because he's a good presenter, says Dan.

"Just watching him, I learned. Dad's not had the history training, he's an enthusiast.

The reason we feel the relationship has always worked is because he's a brilliant storyteller and presenter, but I know more about the facts of the story we're trying to tell."

Snow junior is going solo when he travels to Yorkshire next month for the 23rd annual Jorvik Viking Festival. He launches the five-day Viking invasion on February 13, followed by a talk on 11th Century Battlefields: The Struggle For Viking England in the evening, followed by questions and a book-signing.

"I've done a bit of work with Jorvik Viking Centre in the past," he says. "My speciality is 18th Century history, but I do love York and Vikings."

His talk is about "how England was this great trap fought over by competing pirates - it's quite an incredible period when we were invaded the whole time."

He also takes the opportunity to put the record straight about the Saxons. It's a misconception, he says, that they were a bunch of savages and that history began in 1066. "The Anglo-Saxons established the crown of England, the nation of England, and ran it incredibly efficiently, arguably better than the Normans who followed," he says.

Snow has been interested in history since childhood. "I always loved history and was very bad at everything else. My family love history, my aunt is a historian and dad is a keen enthusiast of history."

IF he hadn't had the chance to do TV presenting, Dan say he'd probably have had to get a "proper job". "I'd probably have stayed at university and done a PhD in some unusual subject like Napoleonic history or something."

As a TV historian, Dan is constantly in peril. His CV tells how, during the course of his TV career, he's been gassed, set on fire, contracted hypothermia, flown in a B-17 over Central London and been tortured. All of which helped earn him a place in a list of the top 1,000 most influential Londoners last year.

He has a programme on Hadrian, of Wall fame, coming to TV next summer, as well as a History Channel show detailing 50 things every Briton should know about their history, but the 18th Century remains his first love. "I'm writing about the fall of Quebec," he says. "I'm interested in the history of warfare not just specific periods but in a more abstract way - what human beings hope to achieve through warfare and why warfare has been so resilient."

THE 23rd Jorvik Viking Festival promises five days of Viking-themed events in a city-wide celebration of the Viking Age that annually attracts more than 40,000 visitors from all over the world. Highlights, some of which require advance booking and an entrance fee applies, include: February 13: Invasion Day An Evening With Dan Snow on 11th Century Battlefields: The Struggle for Viking England at Tempest Anderson Hall, Yorkshire Museum, 6.30pm.

February 14: Arts Day Viking Arts Fair, 10am-4pm, Festival Marquee, St Sampson's Square.

Stories Galore includes children's authors Kjartan Poskitt and Northern Echo children's books editor Rosalind Kerven reading from their latest novels, 11.45am-4.30pm, Coppergate marquee.

February 15: Combat Day Walking Wounded with theatrical make-up sessions, 11am-4pm, Coppergate Museum.

Combat Through The Ages in which experts talk about arms and armour used in movie epics such as The Lord Of The Rings, 10.30am-1pm and 1.30-4pm, Festival marquee, St Sampson's Square.

February 16: Battle Day Author Joanne Harris with her new children's fantasy novel Runemarks, 11am and 2pm, York Central Library.

Evening Battle: Light And Sound Spectacular, 6.15pm, Eye of York, next to Clifford's Tower.

February 17: International Day Hungate Open Day with tours round the largest excavation York has seen in over 23 years.

The Way Of The Sword explores the Vikings and the Samurai, 10.30-3.30pm, Coppergate Square.

■ For more information on the festival visit www.jorvikvikingcentre.

com or call the information line on 01904-643211.

For bookings call 01904- 543402.