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

by David Mitchell

Was the dissolution of the monasteries the moment when England started to become accustomed to the unsettling effect of what its authority figures insist is progress? It’s often struck me as a lamentable trait in the modern British, and I think

it manifests most in England, of glumly accepting change that no one likes or wants. Post office closures, the decline in manufacture, the decimation of shops and pubs in high streets, the requirement to do everything online. These are

developments that very few of us like but the consensus seems to be that we need to grow up and take it: things can’t be nice, this is the real world. That’s life. Shit happens. ...

The French don’t take the same view. They’re much happier using their collective power to sustain a way of life they like. Hence they have a law which prevents people from s...

actual law! I only know about it because, during the Covid lockdown, it was temporarily suspended on the basis that all the restaurants and cafés were closed. Imagine having a law about...

out and have a proper lunch. Go to a brasserie, or go home and cook. The food will be nicer and so will your experience of the day, one of a finite number you will live through. We’d never ...

England. It would get condemned as ‘Nanny State’. The notion of freedom, of English exceptionalism, would be deployed by the harsh anti-protectionist right and we’d dutifully carry on eating...

ulcers and then, at the weekend, moaning that there aren’t any decent pla...