Unruly: The Number One Bestseller ‘Horrible Histories for grownups’ The Times

Product Information

But the real nightmare was when they seemed briefly to succeed, as happened under Edward III and Henry V. Perhaps this is how history should be done: not by patient scholars, nor by the telegenic likes of Beard, Schama, Olusoga, or Worsley but by free-swearing actor-comedians and Observer columnists cramming more ideas and jokes into their pages than many professionals have committed to print in their careers. An incandescent John with, one imagines, red face and crown askew, boarded the ship anyway and sailed out into the Channel to wait for them. How this happened, who it happened to and why it matters in modern Britain are all questions David answers with brilliance, wit and the full erudition of a man who once studied history – and won’t let it off the hook for the mess it’s made.

Nobody’s quite sure of the number and it’s not clear whether that fact has been lost in the intervening centuries or whether the king himself didn’t know. Victories such as Crécy or Poitiers had the same unbalancing psychological effect as when a journey somewhere goes much more quickly than expected. Perhaps his most ridiculous moment came in 1205 when, having lost most of his French lands, he organised a massive expedition to try to get them back which, at the 11th hour, the entire English aristocracy refused to join. He was spectacularly unsuccessful, inheriting England, Ireland and most of France but then losing control of almost all of it within two decades. A funny book that takes history seriously, Unruly is for anyone who has ever wondered how the British monarchy came to be—and who is to blame.King Alfred, the first king to lay claim to ruling the English as a people and the only English king to have been issued with the epithet “Great”, nevertheless spent a large part of his early reign hiding from the Vikings in a bog – by which I mean a marsh. The medieval monarchy is a succession of brutes and fools, with the occasional foolish brute and one or two ruthlessly efficient tyrants.

To be portrayed to the country and the world as so important and yet be able to walk into every room without seeming arrogant, despite the presence of hundreds of people starting to bow and scrape, is a unique gift. Unruly is worth reading, not just for its exemplary gag to fact ratio, but to disabuse us of such delusions.Intriguingly, Mitchell doesn’t tee up the sequel but argues rather that this is the natural end to his story since afterwards kings and queens were less central to England’s story. Worryingly the country was better governed during that year than at any other time during the reign. Dazzling victories were won, albeit at horrendous human cost, and the illusion was fleetingly conjured up that somehow the python that was England could swallow the Renault 5 that was France.

They may not have been able to help being twats – the mores and values of their times and of their class may have made them twats. For most of the middle ages from the Norman Conquest onwards, the kings of England were obsessed with acquiring or re-acquiring large sections of France.David Mitchell’s Unruly book tour includes events at Newcastle City Hall (26 September) in conversation with Alan Davies; Shepherd’s Bush Empire (29 September) in conversation with Ben Elton, and New Theatre Oxford (16 October) in conversation with Jeremy Paxman. The modern royals may provide a few scandals and embarrassments for the public to enjoy or condemn or both, but it’s just a muted and low-key coda to the centuries of humiliation, incompetence, criminality and failure exhibited by their far more powerful predecessors. How this happened, who it happened to, and why the hell it matters are all questions that Mitchell answers with brilliance, wit, and the full erudition of a man who once studied history—and won’t let it off the hook for the mess it’s made.

David Mitchell brings adelightfully contrary and hilariously cantankerous eye to the history of the English monarchy, offering a jewel of an insight or a refreshing blast of clarifying wit on every page. But this ruthlessness, while showing ambition and vigour, was no barrier to incompetence or vainglorious delusion. For this city break, he took 24 outfits, had 12 packhorses to carry his silver dinner service, eight wagons of baggage and horses with monkeys riding on them.

Four years later, when Harold himself was dead, the new king, his half-brother Harthacnut, took revenge on Alfred’s behalf: he had Harold’s body dug up, beheaded and then chucked in a ditch. By turns fascinating and funny – there is a jewel of an insight or a refreshing blast of clarifying wit on every page. The public rift between William and Harry (with the latter emigrating alongside his wife amid talk of vindictive and racist treatment by family and courtiers, and then selling a tell-all book about it), the festering wound of Prince Andrew’s reputation and the king’s bad-temperedness about his pen all seem to show that royal dignity and probity have disappeared. Despite the context into which she was thrust at a very young age, which was one of overt glory, one where people were obliged almost to worship her or it was a breach of protocol, she kept an amazingly firm lid on her self-esteem.