Unruly: The Number One Bestseller ‘Horrible Histories for grownups’ The Times

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David Mitchell brings adelightfully contrary and hilariously cantankerous eye to the history of the English monarchy, offering a jewel of an insight or a refreshing blast of clarifying wit on every page. Perhaps this is how history should be done: not by patient scholars, but by free-swearing actor-comedians cramming more ideas and jokes into their pages than many professionals have committed to print in their careers.

To be portrayed to the country and the world as so important and yet be able to walk into every room without seeming arrogant, despite the presence of hundreds of people starting to bow and scrape, is a unique gift. Perhaps his most ridiculous moment came in 1205 when, having lost most of his French lands, he organised a massive expedition to try to get them back which, at the 11th hour, the entire English aristocracy refused to join. David Mitchell’s Unruly book tour includes events at Newcastle City Hall (26 September) in conversation with Alan Davies; Shepherd’s Bush Empire (29 September) in conversation with Ben Elton, and New Theatre Oxford (16 October) in conversation with Jeremy Paxman. Kingship, despite the crown, robes, processions, coaches, trumpets and anthems, has often been an undignified activity – all the more so because it’s supposed to be dignified. Nobody’s quite sure of the number and it’s not clear whether that fact has been lost in the intervening centuries or whether the king himself didn’t know.Mitchell doubts, for instance, that Henry II actually said: “Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?

But this ruthlessness, while showing ambition and vigour, was no barrier to incompetence or vainglorious delusion. The medieval monarchy is a succession of brutes and fools, with the occasional foolish brute and one or two ruthlessly efficient tyrants. The intensity of intra-familial hatred in many periods of royal history makes the William and Harry rift look like a tersely raised eyebrow over a Boxing Day game of Trivial Pursuit. 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.You or I could have told them it was impossible – against the laws of physics – but, drunk on notions of regal greatness and their divine right, they bought into the notion again and again.

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. 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. BBC One), the host of The Unbelievable Truth on Radio 4 and one of the Observer's most popular columnists.Dazzling victories were won, albeit at horrendous human cost, and the illusion was fleetingly conjured up that somehow the python that was England could swallow the Renault 5 that was France. 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? Throughout the middle ages, our rulers supposedly had the endorsement of God, which made their failures all the more humiliating. Worryingly the country was better governed during that year than at any other time during the reign.