Some of comedian and Observer columnist David Mitchell’s account of English history is old news. Everyone knows John was an inept king who tried to slime his way out of the baron-generated shackles of the Magna Carta, that William the Conqueror’s bowels exploded, that Harold would have done well to take two steps to the left to miss an incoming arrow, that Henry V needed a new barber, that Henry VIII had nice legs, that Richard I preferred France or indeed anywhere than his rain-soaked no-mark kingdom, that Lady Jane Grey held the highest office for less time than Liz Truss, and that if you really want to understand Cnut it’s best to think of his name as a spelling error.
But there are revelations here, too. In 1157, for instance, Thomas Becket headed to Paris to negotiate the perfectly normal betrothal of Henry II’s two-year-old son to King Louis VII of France’s one-year-old daughter. For this city break, he took 24 outfits, had 12 packhorses to carry his silver dinner service, eight wagons of baggage and horses with monkeys riding on them. Why? Mitchell elucidates St Thomas’s thought process: “If I don’t have horses with monkeys riding them, the king of France won’t take me seriously.”
Unruly is part Horrible Histories, part jolly romp guided by Alan Bennett’s view that history has no sense but is “just one fucking thing after another”. But it is mostly – this being a history of England – swearing.
Mitchell doubts, for instance, that Henry II actually said: “Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?” before Becket was terminated in Canterbury Cathedral. “It was something more along the lines of ‘What sort of a bunch of saps have I surrounded myself with that they let me get treated like shit by this fucking oik?’”
Forget about an audiobook, Mitchell ought to do a video in which he, in character as Mark Corrigan from Peep Show, poshly declaims while pacing his shoebox Croydon flat. He might particularly enjoy reading this passage about why it’s unnecessary to decide between the awfulness of King Stephen and Queen Matilda: “They were both twats. They may not have been able to help being twats – the mores and values of their times and of their class may have made them twats. But they were twats and terrible things happened as a result.”
Mitchell’s swearing conceals his serious point, namely: “Having kings is an awful system.” Monarchy lends itself not to capable and professional rulers like Henry I, but rather to chancers and scumbags like Stephen and Matilda who caused misery to their subjects in ways that make later virtuosos Johnson and Truss seem like rank amateurs.
The divine right of kings, heraldry, primogeniture and porphyrogeniture (the hilarious rule of succession whereby the son born to a king in office has first dibs on the throne over older siblings born before daddy took office) are, to Mitchell, really devices to retrospectively justify power grabs by inbred sociopaths or their mums.
His narrative begins, boldly, with a king who didn’t exist. “Gandalf is fictional,” Mitchell writes. “Arthur is a lie.” And yet lies, myths and medieval PR makeovers are what make this story compelling: England created itself from its own myths, while simultaneously satirically debunking them. To that end, Mitchell quotes Dennis, a character in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, who skewers the allure of Camelot: “Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.”
His story ends with the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603, though you’d think there are more fascinatingly terrible kings and queens that need to be accounted for, not least Hitler fan Edward VIII, one-man pie shop George IV, and – if Olivia Colman’s turn in The Favourite is anything to go by – bonkers woman-baby Queen Anne.
Intriguingly, Mitchell doesn’t tee up the sequel but argues rather that this is the natural end to his story since afterwards kings and queens were less central to England’s story. Try telling that to Charles I or indeed Charles III.
Perhaps this is how history should be done: not by patient scholars, nor by the telegenic likes of Beard, Schama, Olusoga, or Worsley but by free-swearing actor-comedians and Observer columnists cramming more ideas and jokes into their pages than many professionals have committed to print in their careers.
In 2023, we flatter ourselves that we no longer put foes’ eyes out with swords or die of bubonic plague, and that the NHS, universal suffrage, widespread literacy, CBT, social media and increased life expectancy make us different from the toxic wingnuts who predominate in Mitchell’s book. Unruly is worth reading, not just for its exemplary gag to fact ratio, but to disabuse us of such delusions.
Mitchell admits to checking what Battle looks like on Google Maps. When the Battle of Hastings took place, Battle, which is outside Hastings, didn’t exist, he notes. Otherwise it would have been called the Battle of Battle. How lovely, he writes, that since 1066 Battle has become a peaceful English village with tearooms and such. But then the Google Maps-generated idyll curdles. It was a lovely sunny day when “the dystopian droid car went through stealing everybody’s data”. Things can get better, sure. But at the same time, as Mitchell might put it, they can get much fucking worse.
• This article was amended on 16 October 2023 to remove a reference that was inconsistent with the Guardian’s style guidelines.
• Unruly: A History of England’s Kings and Queens by David Mitchell is published by Michael Joseph (£25). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
