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

by David Mitchell

Is assuming that things improve the best way of ensuring they will? I doubt it. A healthy fear of societal cataclysm may be a good technique for avoiding it.

I don’t know where the idea of Vikings having horns on their helmets came from, but it’s a brilliant one. In every possible way, other than the literal truth, they totally had horns on their helmets. Horned helmets was absolutely their vibe and I feel we all have a right to that deeper artistic truth. They had limited technology and manufacturing helmets was pretty tricky for them, I imagine, so putting horns on them wouldn’t have been workable, and wouldn’t have increased the functionality of the helmets, but I swear they’d have given it a go if they’d thought of it.

It was discovered in Somerset in 1693 by people who didn’t even realize they were living in the past themselves. It was assumed, probably correctly, that it was made for King Alfred the Great because it has the phrase ‘Alfred ordered me made’ written around it in Old English.

I remember being told at school that Alfred was the only British king who’s called the Great. The ninth century seemed quite early for British history to have peaked. The best king over with before the proper numbering system even started.

Alfred’s and Asser’s efforts to lay down the basis for a nice positive Wikipedia page were useful to posterity.

So stealing the crown isn’t just like stealing an object – say a crown – something that can then be returned to its rightful owner. It’s like stealing a sandwich and then eating it. The delicious sandwichy goodness of royalty was within Henry no matter what Robert did.

Basically it’s a hierarchy. At the top there’s the king, whose major subjects hold lands ‘from’ him as his tenants-in-chief, who in turn have major tenants, knights and the like, who in turn have their own tenants among the wealthier peasantry, and then there are those tied to the land by serfdom. It’s a system supposedly held together by bonds of mutual obligation: the tier above protects the tier below which, in recompense, provides labour, military service and/or money in lieu. In practice it must have been horrible, though I suspect Julian Fellowes might have a go at a picturesque drama in which all the peasants are much happier being protected by a kindly lord (possibly played by me – just a thought, if you’re reading, Julian) than being troubled with nasty state benefits that they just fritter away on crystal meth and the lottery while losing their ancestral skills of planting crops and grooming horses.

His major achievement was balancing the books, which he managed by various sensible economic measures such as not having a civil war and not trying to conquer France.

Of course it’s more complicated than that and the chances are you already know that. He’s such a famous king that almost anyone who would ever buy or read a history book in English knows the main things about him. There are six of them and they’re his wives: Divorced, Beheaded, Died, Divorced, Beheaded, Survived. In retrospect we should have given them names. I’ve stolen that line from the great comedian Rob Brydon who says it after listing his children’s ages.

The loneliness of pariah status will be familiar to many who have neglected to entirely agree with one or other of two savagely opposed points of view.

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. Nothing pleasant can be made economically viable.

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 staying at their desk in an office over lunch. An 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 something like that! Don’t work at your desk: get 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.