Let’s face it, the English monarchy can be rather boring. Granted, a few individuals stand out, either because they were surprisingly competent (Alfred the Great, Edward III and the two Elizabeths) or more often because they were stupendously awful (Richard III, John, Aethelred the Unready, Henry VIII). The rest, to be honest, are pretty easy to forget; it’s difficult to distinguish most of those Edwards from most of those Henrys. And then there’s Aethelbald, Aethelbert and Aethelstan, notable mainly for their weird names. As David Mitchell speculates, pronouncing their names would probably have been much easier in a time of “catastrophically poor dental hygiene”.
To the rescue rides Mitchell, who could render an HMRC manual interesting. Mitchell, formerly of Peep Show, QI etc, is a funny man and (no surprise, really) a skilled historian. He studied history at Cambridge in the 1990s and has always impressed me with his detailed knowledge of early modern Britain. One senses that this book might be his revenge on past tutors who rendered his favorite subject dull (more on that later).
