Historians, heritage charities, broadcasters and just about anyone else you can think of who makes a living out of the past have banded together to make Henry Ford a hate figure.

Ford said that "History is more or less bunk". But the History Matters campaign, organised by the National Trust, English Heritage and a host of other charities, aims to dismiss that kind of outlook with a series of events to encourage Britons to be aware of their past and cherish it.

Any campaign that encourages such traditional rivals as the politicians Tony Benn and Boris Johnson or the historians Tristram Hunt and David Starkey to agree must have a universal appeal.

Few would now contend that history is a minority interest, with entire cable channels devoted to it and even mainstream television stations such as BBC2 recording multi-million audiences for programmes on family history.

The new campaign comes on the back of a Mori poll showing that far more people are interested in the past than in celebrities and football.

The survey found that 73 per cent of us say we are interested in history compared with 48 per cent for soccer.

The heritage charities are trying to rally support for history, in its broadest sense, before the Government settles its long-term spending priorities and hands out every spare penny to Lord Coe and the organisers of the 2012 Olympics.

Dr Hunt, the television historian and pin-up of Left-leaning academics, says: "What do people now remember about the Olympics of Atlanta or Sydney or Moscow? Very little. Unfortunately, if you look back at the legacies of previous Olympics, there isn't much to see except empty stadia.

"But there is, for instance, a danger that the Government will botch the whole Stonehenge project, with the new road and so on, for lack of funds."

Ivo Dawnay, the communications director of the National Trust, said that the campaign was intended to go beyond arguments about the teaching of history in schools, whether it be better to concentrate on dates or trying to get children to empathise with the medieval villein's lot.

"It's a very practical matter: tourism is the second biggest industry in this country and the main reason foreign visitors cite for coming to Britain is its historical heritage," Mr Dawnay said.

The names who have collected behind the campaign are impressive. From Bill Bryson and Stephen Fry to Joan Bakewell and Carol Thatcher, from Mr Benn and Mr Johnson to Adam Hart Davis and Antony Beevor, all are involved in an effort to save Britain from a collective dementia.

"If a person loses their memory, they have Alzheimer's and lose all their sense of who they are and where they fit in," said Mr Starkey.

"When a country loses its memory, it is suffering from a political, a social and a cultural Alzheimer's and there are moments now when I fear that large parts of our culture are going down that route.

"Liberty itself is something more than an aspiration, it is something which if you are British or English is built into you and your ancestors. They fought for liberty, they died for it, they struggled for it and we should be doing the same."

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, echoed his remarks: "When someone tells me that history doesn't matter, it always seems to be when they are trying to take something away from me."

She said it was vital that Britons were more aware of history, that we all had historians to listen to, so that the Government could be challenged when it threatened hard-won human rights in the name of fighting terrorism.

"Is it really true that this country has never faced such a threat before as it now faces from al-Qa'eda or other terrorism? Perhaps the historians can tell us."

The Conservatives were committed to a proper teaching of history, said Mr Johnson, the party's higher education spokesman and a columnist for The Daily Telegraph. "It is terrifying that 16 per cent of girls and boys in the 12- and 14-year-old age group think that the battle of Waterloo was won by Gandalf," he said.

Mr Benn said that an understanding of history was vital to comprehend "how it is that working people have always been persuaded to kill each other in the interests of the powerful guys".

The Mori survey showed that 69 per cent of Britons thought that history was a "cool" subject and almost two thirds of those questioned believed that the Government was not doing enough to protect the nation's heritage.