Unruly: The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens

by David Mitchell

The fact is that, when millions of people are involved, any sense of a nation united in its values can only be portrayed by repressing the feelings and views of many.

History is a very contemporary thing – it’s ours to think about, manipulate, use to win arguments or to justify patriotism, nationalism or group self-loathing, according to taste. In contrast, the past is unknowable. It’s as complicated as the present. It’s an infinity of former nows all as unfathomable as this one. That’s why historians end up specializing in tiny bits of it.

Violence is a constant, the religious views are just the accompanying spin.

We can understand more clearly that history isn’t actually a proper story. It’s more like a soap opera. It never fucking ends. So it has to get cyclical. England comes together and then something has to happen next, and one of the options that the exhausted cosmic hack writers might go for is England falls apart again. The same goes for Britain. Together, apart, united, divided.

People don’t die as much as they used to. That’s not quite true. People still die at exactly the same rate as they always have: once per person.

Amid all this levity about the strange name Aelfgifu, which must have sounded perfectly normal to people in those days, don’t think I’m unaware of the enormous vagina in the room. I am referring of course to Cnut’s name, which is basically Cunt. It’s very very nearly Cunt.

People don’t always do what they say they’re going to do. You’ve got to keep your eye on that and seriously consider not doing what you’ve said you’re going to do yourself, in pre-emptive response. Don’t be the first to jump in the pool. Or the last.

It’s because, in the middle ages, only rich people ate meat and, after the Norman Conquest, all the rich people spoke French. The French words for the animals – boeuf, porc, mouton – turned into the words for the foods, and the English words came to refer to the animals under the only circumstances where the peasantry encountered them: when looking after them until they were ready to be turned into posh people’s dinner.

It’s even uncomfortable writing a paragraph about it, here and now in London, because some eagle-eyed readers will be analysing it for inappropriate views on the Israel–Palestine situation. If this were a website instead of a book, I’d have installed cookies so that this section could manifest exactly the same views on that situation as the reader has previously betrayed with their browsing history. But I can’t, so let me just say that I am passionately committed to whatever it is you think.

The roses couldn’t do any of the fighting themselves – they’re as inert as floppy King Henry. Still, pricks can draw blood and the aristocracy was full of them.