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

by David Mitchell

it nevertheless shows that thinking outside boxes can sometimes result in thousands of young men getting buried in them.

Monarchy is what England has instead of a sense of identity.

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.

Violence is a constant, the religious views are just the accompanying spin. The largest avowedly atheistic societies in all human history, the various communist states of the twentieth century, didn’t stint on murder.

Its legacy is that, in modern English, we often have words for the meats we eat that are different from those for the animals they come from – beef for cow, pork for pig and mutton for sheep. This isn’t out of delicacy – an attempt to conceal what docile creature’s slaughter any given lunch has necessitated. 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.

A key skill in a medieval ruler is eliminating doubt, and ruthlessness is part of that. The knowledge that, if crossed, the king will respond with immediate reflex savagery, no matter who is doing it or why, is in a sense reassuring. It reassures you that any rebels who might disturb the peace will be dealt with quickly, so you don’t have to worry about lawlessness in the land. Plus, if you’re a senior baron thinking of rebelling yourself, it reassures you that there’s no point.

In a game, when you don’t know what to do, a good rule of thumb is to do whatever your opponent wants least.

We feel this absence of monarch-envy all the more keenly because we’re lucky enough to live in a time and place where the basics of a pleasant life – food, shelter, entertainment, freedom – are available to millions. The royals’ riches and luxury count for much less than in more squalid eras.

grim though it is to relate, nearly half the children in the middle ages died before the age of ten.

The whole ‘if you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear’ approach to private information is predicated on state power being held in honest and ethical hands. That’s not always the case – it certainly wasn’t in 1381 – and, as a general rule, trusting the state doesn’t make it more trustworthy.