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

by David Mitchell

People found it much easier to believe in a rose-tinted view of the past than a utopian future. They still do: hence ‘Take Back Control’ and ‘Make America Great Again’.

You hear it in the way people rebuke each other for prejudiced remarks by saying ‘Come on, it’s the twenty-first century’, as if the passage of time inevitably brings with it ethical improvements.

The pejorative word ‘dated’ shows how ingrained is our assumption that human civilization gets better over time. It probably has recently, technologically at least, but it’s not a given.

We can understand more clearly that history isn’t actually a proper story. It’s more like a soap opera. It never fucking ends.

I’m acknowledging this because I’m aware of the irony that, while I’m writing about an age in which almost all women (and men) were illiterate, in the current era of mass literacy, it is much more likely that any given book is being read by a woman than by a man. Men read less than women and instead commit more violent crime and listen to more audiobooks. These aren’t necessarily the same men, I should add.