What do you think?
Rate this book
1066 And All That
1975. First Edition Thus. 123 pages. Paperback book with pictorial cover. Black and white illustrations throughout. Pages and binding are presentable with no major defects. Minor issues present such as mild cracking, inscriptions, inserts, light foxing, tanning and thumb marking. Overall a good condition item. Paper cover has mild edge-wear with light rubbing and creasing. Some light marking and tanning.
124 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1930
85 people are currently reading
4015 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 414 reviews
Read
January 5, 2017Its a run through of English history from prehistory to the end of WWI when according to the authors the USA becomes the foremost nation and English history comes to a. Note this is about English history, not British history. And one may feel that even as a joke, it takes the importance of being the top and bestest nation too seriously.
The concept is that it is a history book with the only date scientifically proven to be memorable (1066) as the inclusion of another date (52BC ) in an earlier edition had proved to be insufficiently memorable.
Overall I found it less funny than I had hoped. And the illustrations, amused more than the text Arkwright's Spinning Jenny is for instance depicted as a slim waisted maiden with a smile,or romantic but wrong as the caption beneath a picture of a Cavalier ( the Puritan is right, but repulsive).
I suppose we could take the ending with the dethroning of England by the upstart USA seriously, disguised as joke, in fact a cry of pain - what is England if not biggest and best, in which case we could role back the continuing telenovella "whither Britannia" theme of a country in search of a role from 1945 to 1919. Anyway there is no reason to take such existential angst so seriously I recall reading an interview with two performers, a man and a woman who had a show about the entire history of humanity. The interviewer asked the woman - who had it harder throughout history? Men or Women? The woman took a deep breath "well women plainly what with all the Patriarchy, imperialism, social oppression, warfare," at which point the man interrupted " no, no, you've got it all wrong it was tougher on men because all that Patriarchy, imperialism, social oppression and warfare was just exhausting. "
The concept is that it is a history book with the only date scientifically proven to be memorable (1066) as the inclusion of another date (52BC ) in an earlier edition had proved to be insufficiently memorable.
Overall I found it less funny than I had hoped. And the illustrations, amused more than the text Arkwright's Spinning Jenny is for instance depicted as a slim waisted maiden with a smile,or romantic but wrong as the caption beneath a picture of a Cavalier ( the Puritan is right, but repulsive).
I suppose we could take the ending with the dethroning of England by the upstart USA seriously, disguised as joke, in fact a cry of pain - what is England if not biggest and best, in which case we could role back the continuing telenovella "whither Britannia" theme of a country in search of a role from 1945 to 1919. Anyway there is no reason to take such existential angst so seriously I recall reading an interview with two performers, a man and a woman who had a show about the entire history of humanity. The interviewer asked the woman - who had it harder throughout history? Men or Women? The woman took a deep breath "well women plainly what with all the Patriarchy, imperialism, social oppression, warfare," at which point the man interrupted " no, no, you've got it all wrong it was tougher on men because all that Patriarchy, imperialism, social oppression and warfare was just exhausting. "
March 8, 2009
I really cannot describe the delightful depth of wit. One wouldn’t think that their roving narrative is morally probing, but I detected great commentary on religious intolerance (24-25, 43-44, 66, 87), as well as socially. William and Mary’s “Toleration Act, which said they would tolerate anything, though afterwards it went back on this and decided that they could not tolerate the Scots” (87). Insights on the Southsea Bubble (89, 91-92) are particularly applicable in light of present economically straitened circumstances in America.
I will only include one large excerpt, from 27-28, telling in its style:
They subsequently define baronial duties, among other things, as “to hasten the King’s death, deposition, insanity, etc., and make quite sure that there were always at least three false claimants to the throne,” and “to keep up the Middle Ages” (31). The authors employ a strong offsetting method to make history laughable, such as a definition of the Monroe Doctrine as “prov[ing:] that it is wrong for anyone to have wars in North or South America (except the United States Marines)” (106). I love the way they depict causes of war (such as on 111, 115, 120, 123) or conduct in declaring peace (92-93, 124). “The important International Law called the Rule Brittannia, technically known as the Freedom of the Seas” (11)—they later mention that the Dutch dared to challenge this, but they’re really not big enough to ever hold top nation status (83-84). The English “Civil War” is summarized as “The utterly memorable Struggle between the Cavaliers (Wrong but Wromantic) and the Roundheads (Right but Repulsive)” (75; see 78).
1066 and All That is loaded to the hilt (embedded or otherwise) with sophisticated humor that could well be lost on many without the “benefit” of an extensive historical and literary background. Only in passing, for a few examples, I might say that the conversion by a sparrow (7) has reference to Coifi’s tale as related by Bede, Canute’s sitting on the sea (14) has reference to the tale whereby he showed his advisors that his authority was limited where the waves were concerned, the ditty about Adam and Eve (47) has reference to an egalitarian chant during the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, the egg standing on its end (59) has reference to an apocryphal tale (a favorite of George Q. Cannon’s) about Christopher Columbus demonstrating how easy something is only when one has already done it, ‘Paris is rather a Mess’ (71) should read ‘Paris is worth a Mass,’ and “1 New Presbyter = 1 OLD PRIEST” and ‘No Bishop, No King’ (74) had cryptic reference to Milton’s definition of new presbyters as “old priest writ large” and King James’ reiteration of royal authority. As you can see, having to inform the reader of these facts (perhaps even by way of footnote) would defeat the purpose, so I’m afraid that it will remain a sealed book for most. Still, anyone should feel free to explore it and feel the power of its irregularly recurring themes, like conquest by fire and the sword (as to method, one or both, or its failure); death by a surfeit of something or other; “top nation”; Gray’s Elegy; and the Irish Question (later transmuted into the Eastern Question).
Nevertheless, a quick glance through certain of its features should prove amusing for nearly all. I call your attention to the “rationalized” genealogical table on 33, and the sketch of the Battle of Bannockburn on 37, to say nothing of the hilarious tests interspersed throughout. I think my favorite test question was, 16, “How angry would you be if it was suggested (1) That the XIth Chap. of the Consolations of Boethius was an interpolated palimpsest? (2) That an eisteddfod was an agricultural implement?” Having just concluded a study of the Wars of the Roses, I found the test on 54 astoundingly cutting in its humor (see also 57-59 and 60, #8)! Who wouldn’t laugh at this statement about Henry VIII? “He also invented a game called ‘Bluff King Hal’ which he invited his ministers to play with him. The players were blindfolded and knelt down with their heads on a block of wood; they then guessed whom the King would marry next” (62).
I will only include one large excerpt, from 27-28, telling in its style:
By congregating there, armed to the teeth, the Barons compelled John to sign the Magna Charter, which said:
1. That no one was to be put to death, save for some reason - (except the Common People).
2. That everyone should be free - (except the Common People).
3. That everything should be of the same weight and measure throughout the Realm - (except the Common People).
4. That the Courts should be stationary, instead of following a very tiresome medieval official known as the King's Person all over the country.
5. That 'no person should be fined to his utter ruin' - (except the King's Person).
6. That the Barons should not be tried except by a special jury of other Barons who would understand.
Magna Charter was therefore the chief cause of Democracy in England, and thus a Good Thing for everyone (except the Common People).
They subsequently define baronial duties, among other things, as “to hasten the King’s death, deposition, insanity, etc., and make quite sure that there were always at least three false claimants to the throne,” and “to keep up the Middle Ages” (31). The authors employ a strong offsetting method to make history laughable, such as a definition of the Monroe Doctrine as “prov[ing:] that it is wrong for anyone to have wars in North or South America (except the United States Marines)” (106). I love the way they depict causes of war (such as on 111, 115, 120, 123) or conduct in declaring peace (92-93, 124). “The important International Law called the Rule Brittannia, technically known as the Freedom of the Seas” (11)—they later mention that the Dutch dared to challenge this, but they’re really not big enough to ever hold top nation status (83-84). The English “Civil War” is summarized as “The utterly memorable Struggle between the Cavaliers (Wrong but Wromantic) and the Roundheads (Right but Repulsive)” (75; see 78).
1066 and All That is loaded to the hilt (embedded or otherwise) with sophisticated humor that could well be lost on many without the “benefit” of an extensive historical and literary background. Only in passing, for a few examples, I might say that the conversion by a sparrow (7) has reference to Coifi’s tale as related by Bede, Canute’s sitting on the sea (14) has reference to the tale whereby he showed his advisors that his authority was limited where the waves were concerned, the ditty about Adam and Eve (47) has reference to an egalitarian chant during the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, the egg standing on its end (59) has reference to an apocryphal tale (a favorite of George Q. Cannon’s) about Christopher Columbus demonstrating how easy something is only when one has already done it, ‘Paris is rather a Mess’ (71) should read ‘Paris is worth a Mass,’ and “1 New Presbyter = 1 OLD PRIEST” and ‘No Bishop, No King’ (74) had cryptic reference to Milton’s definition of new presbyters as “old priest writ large” and King James’ reiteration of royal authority. As you can see, having to inform the reader of these facts (perhaps even by way of footnote) would defeat the purpose, so I’m afraid that it will remain a sealed book for most. Still, anyone should feel free to explore it and feel the power of its irregularly recurring themes, like conquest by fire and the sword (as to method, one or both, or its failure); death by a surfeit of something or other; “top nation”; Gray’s Elegy; and the Irish Question (later transmuted into the Eastern Question).
Nevertheless, a quick glance through certain of its features should prove amusing for nearly all. I call your attention to the “rationalized” genealogical table on 33, and the sketch of the Battle of Bannockburn on 37, to say nothing of the hilarious tests interspersed throughout. I think my favorite test question was, 16, “How angry would you be if it was suggested (1) That the XIth Chap. of the Consolations of Boethius was an interpolated palimpsest? (2) That an eisteddfod was an agricultural implement?” Having just concluded a study of the Wars of the Roses, I found the test on 54 astoundingly cutting in its humor (see also 57-59 and 60, #8)! Who wouldn’t laugh at this statement about Henry VIII? “He also invented a game called ‘Bluff King Hal’ which he invited his ministers to play with him. The players were blindfolded and knelt down with their heads on a block of wood; they then guessed whom the King would marry next” (62).
July 30, 2012
Things this book doesn't explain about England.
(1) Fishfingers in a white bread roll. Not so much that they exist as they pass for nutrition.
(2) First class on trains being quite often cheaper than economy.
(3) The help I get in the Underground with my bag. And yet my niece with her baby in a pram gets not a finger lifted to her. Stephen says it is because my bag is bigger than I am. Luton, which is full of sweet men who take charge. Not once have I asked for help, it is just given.
(4) Why Birmingham Big Macs are killers.
(5) How food can be so bad in the UK that Wagamama looks good. So when they ask what you think of it, it is difficult to come up with a good answer. In Australia we think it is complete rubbish, no different from eating at MacDonalds. And yet I can see in the UK it might be haute cuisine. The people you are with think it is mmmmmm good. That good.
(6) Why are the chips SO fantastic?
(7) Why are there so many fabulous local cheeses? Right now I'm just addicted to Yarg.
(8) Why are people so badly dressed? On average. Even in nice bits of London.
(9) Why do people want to stay in odd hotels where nothing works?
(10) I take my bowl of breakfast outside to walk around the garden in naked feet - I know I should say 'bare' but I have sex on the brain just now - and after a while I realise my feet are freezing and upon further thought I realise the GROUND is frozen. Literally. That's never happened to me before. I think this book could have explained that too.
(11) Cluedo. I've just had my brains beaten in at Cluedo. It's HARD. About to start play against a world class bridge team online and that feels like it is going to be so easy in comparison. And I have a tip: never play Cluedo with computational algorithmists.
(12) I'm sitting on the bus tonight and this girl across the aisle, lambasting what I imagine to be a stranger opposite her: 'They say we aren't normal just because we aren't normal. Ha. It's the ones who aren't normal who are normal.' And, swept along with the momentum of her argument 'It's the ones who are normal who aren't normal. They're the abnormal ones.' Her logic was beginning to sound impeccable to me, though it was making my head hurt. She somehow segued into how she was fine-tuning her medication at the moment and I reminded myself not to ask her what I should be taking for my headache.
A little while later a woman comes up to me and asks me anxiously if I'm a doctor and when I say 'no' she sits down like she was specifically looking for somebody who wasn't. She starts telling me about how she's been in hospital all day and she hasn't had any water for 10 hours and did I know what that does to you? Well, she was talking to the wrong doctor. I don't believe in water. Her idea that her insanity revolved around having had slightly less water than the other people in the bus just didn't do it for me.
It was time to get off.
Manchester. Full of insane people, maybe? I'm starting to wonder.
(13) Now that Manny has mentioned the Australian connection. I'm walking down Wilmslow Road and an Englishman stops me. 'Where is the Victoria Hotel?' he wanted to know. So I say I'm from Australia, which as explanations of ignorance go, didn't get me very far at all. 'If you are from Australia,' he said, 'You should know where all the pubs are, shouldn't you.' It was an accusation, not a question. As it happens, while (12) was happening to me and I was staring out the window trying to be somewhere else, I did discover the very pub. Next time I'll be prepared.
(14)I was very little when I read 1066. I wish I could have known this. That much later we would sit one dark evening on a bench just outside the Tower of London, cold and dark, so nobody is about and your arm is around me and it is like magic. 'Just imagine', I whisper to you, 'that you are up there, trapped in that tower, unable to get out, unable to see me.' We look and picture this. 'And outside, so near by, looking up towards you right here I would be, full of despair at our predicament but hopeful still that some plan will get you out of there.' I rather think the Tower of London should be seen how we saw it. Alone and dark, evoking the danger and sadness and heroes and betrayal that are its past.
(15) I’m somewhere between gutted and laughing my head off. All illusions about 1066 are now completely shattered as I’ve been here:
It’s Slade Hall and I’ve never been to a Hall before and Mandy was thinking of buying it, so I went along to pick out my bedroom and bathroom of which it has 14 and 7 respectively, and I’m gutted. You think it looks good there, don’t you? And it has this fabulous history going all the way back to 1160 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slade_Hall
But honestly, it’s this dreadful dive. It must have been truly horrible being poor if this is how the rich people lived, that’s all I can say. I thought there’d be grand rooms for banquets and balls and – but all the rooms are small squalid little things. The fireplaces are 1970s copper. Do you have Copper Art here in the UK? If so, yep, exactly.
And that picture, talk about photoshopping. To the right of the main door quite a lot of that black and white façade is rotting and falling off. It’s redwood and it’s only been there 5 years. Or so Mike, the caretaker said. And look further to the right and some of it is painted cement!! I had no idea cement was such an old invention in England. Honestly.
Mike is the caretaker and I have now met somebody who actually uses ‘Y’know wot I mean?’ instead of punctuation. Brilliant. We are standing looking at that view in the photo and he invites us to look at the stumps of trees to each side of the front door – which you can see in the picture above. They were a glorious feature. But when the councilmen came a while ago to deal with a tree that was messing big time with the gutters – ie a tree that shed leaves – what they did was cut down these two beautiful conifers. “’We know our job’ (– Mike quotes them –) y’know wot I mean?” I’m wondering why the real estate agent’s picture didn’t photoshop the trees back in.
So we’re standing there and truly you have seen by far and away the best of this building, the crumbling façade and the ruined trees and I thought we’d be making the grand entrance through that front door but ‘We’ll use the side entrance. The students stopped using the front entrance because the key’s about 2 foot long. Y’know…’
Yes, ladies and gentleman. We are in student heaven. The reason the trees are all covered in dramatic cobwebs I realise is not because the Queensland Maneating spider has been imported to this neck of Manchester but because of Halloween. There was a bit of a party that night. Just 500 or so.
Fourteen rooms of students (as Mike always calls them, y’know wot I mean?) and, well, it is quite an interesting situation. The students have no intention of showing us any of the bedrooms since they love the place. And I really mean love it. This is an ad for rooms that is current: http://manchester.gumtree.com/manches...
So, they are not cooperating with viewings, the for sale sign hasn’t a chance. But they don’t seem to understand that only one sort of person could possibly think of buying the place: somebody who wants to let it out to bunches of students. They are in fact, completely safe. We hate it as much as they love it.
But much as I hate it, you read that Gumtree ad for the rooms for rent and, well, doesn’t it tug at you somewhere? A whole community really does revolve around this extraordinary building. Not just the people who live there, it reaches much further than that. I had started off wondering if somebody might buy it and spend a million or two doing it up as a bed and breakfast. Luckily it is for now in quite the wrong part of town for that to be a sensible proposition.
The people who built this place between about the 12th and 17th centuries must surely have been so proud, so full of loyalty to what they had made. It is the most splendid thing that, hundreds of years later it is still loved with a passion by people who feel it is part of their being. I hope they win the day.
Oh. And if you want to know about the ghosts, go here: http://www.budman.u-net.com/sgsweb/Sl...
I could go on, but you get the drift. I read this when I was very little and I kind of thought I knew all about England, but it turns out there is a lot left unanswered in the book.
Perhaps a revised edition?
(1) Fishfingers in a white bread roll. Not so much that they exist as they pass for nutrition.
(2) First class on trains being quite often cheaper than economy.
(3) The help I get in the Underground with my bag. And yet my niece with her baby in a pram gets not a finger lifted to her. Stephen says it is because my bag is bigger than I am. Luton, which is full of sweet men who take charge. Not once have I asked for help, it is just given.
(4) Why Birmingham Big Macs are killers.
(5) How food can be so bad in the UK that Wagamama looks good. So when they ask what you think of it, it is difficult to come up with a good answer. In Australia we think it is complete rubbish, no different from eating at MacDonalds. And yet I can see in the UK it might be haute cuisine. The people you are with think it is mmmmmm good. That good.
(6) Why are the chips SO fantastic?
(7) Why are there so many fabulous local cheeses? Right now I'm just addicted to Yarg.
(8) Why are people so badly dressed? On average. Even in nice bits of London.
(9) Why do people want to stay in odd hotels where nothing works?
(10) I take my bowl of breakfast outside to walk around the garden in naked feet - I know I should say 'bare' but I have sex on the brain just now - and after a while I realise my feet are freezing and upon further thought I realise the GROUND is frozen. Literally. That's never happened to me before. I think this book could have explained that too.
(11) Cluedo. I've just had my brains beaten in at Cluedo. It's HARD. About to start play against a world class bridge team online and that feels like it is going to be so easy in comparison. And I have a tip: never play Cluedo with computational algorithmists.
(12) I'm sitting on the bus tonight and this girl across the aisle, lambasting what I imagine to be a stranger opposite her: 'They say we aren't normal just because we aren't normal. Ha. It's the ones who aren't normal who are normal.' And, swept along with the momentum of her argument 'It's the ones who are normal who aren't normal. They're the abnormal ones.' Her logic was beginning to sound impeccable to me, though it was making my head hurt. She somehow segued into how she was fine-tuning her medication at the moment and I reminded myself not to ask her what I should be taking for my headache.
A little while later a woman comes up to me and asks me anxiously if I'm a doctor and when I say 'no' she sits down like she was specifically looking for somebody who wasn't. She starts telling me about how she's been in hospital all day and she hasn't had any water for 10 hours and did I know what that does to you? Well, she was talking to the wrong doctor. I don't believe in water. Her idea that her insanity revolved around having had slightly less water than the other people in the bus just didn't do it for me.
It was time to get off.
Manchester. Full of insane people, maybe? I'm starting to wonder.
(13) Now that Manny has mentioned the Australian connection. I'm walking down Wilmslow Road and an Englishman stops me. 'Where is the Victoria Hotel?' he wanted to know. So I say I'm from Australia, which as explanations of ignorance go, didn't get me very far at all. 'If you are from Australia,' he said, 'You should know where all the pubs are, shouldn't you.' It was an accusation, not a question. As it happens, while (12) was happening to me and I was staring out the window trying to be somewhere else, I did discover the very pub. Next time I'll be prepared.
(14)I was very little when I read 1066. I wish I could have known this. That much later we would sit one dark evening on a bench just outside the Tower of London, cold and dark, so nobody is about and your arm is around me and it is like magic. 'Just imagine', I whisper to you, 'that you are up there, trapped in that tower, unable to get out, unable to see me.' We look and picture this. 'And outside, so near by, looking up towards you right here I would be, full of despair at our predicament but hopeful still that some plan will get you out of there.' I rather think the Tower of London should be seen how we saw it. Alone and dark, evoking the danger and sadness and heroes and betrayal that are its past.
(15) I’m somewhere between gutted and laughing my head off. All illusions about 1066 are now completely shattered as I’ve been here:
It’s Slade Hall and I’ve never been to a Hall before and Mandy was thinking of buying it, so I went along to pick out my bedroom and bathroom of which it has 14 and 7 respectively, and I’m gutted. You think it looks good there, don’t you? And it has this fabulous history going all the way back to 1160 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slade_Hall
But honestly, it’s this dreadful dive. It must have been truly horrible being poor if this is how the rich people lived, that’s all I can say. I thought there’d be grand rooms for banquets and balls and – but all the rooms are small squalid little things. The fireplaces are 1970s copper. Do you have Copper Art here in the UK? If so, yep, exactly.
And that picture, talk about photoshopping. To the right of the main door quite a lot of that black and white façade is rotting and falling off. It’s redwood and it’s only been there 5 years. Or so Mike, the caretaker said. And look further to the right and some of it is painted cement!! I had no idea cement was such an old invention in England. Honestly.
Mike is the caretaker and I have now met somebody who actually uses ‘Y’know wot I mean?’ instead of punctuation. Brilliant. We are standing looking at that view in the photo and he invites us to look at the stumps of trees to each side of the front door – which you can see in the picture above. They were a glorious feature. But when the councilmen came a while ago to deal with a tree that was messing big time with the gutters – ie a tree that shed leaves – what they did was cut down these two beautiful conifers. “’We know our job’ (– Mike quotes them –) y’know wot I mean?” I’m wondering why the real estate agent’s picture didn’t photoshop the trees back in.
So we’re standing there and truly you have seen by far and away the best of this building, the crumbling façade and the ruined trees and I thought we’d be making the grand entrance through that front door but ‘We’ll use the side entrance. The students stopped using the front entrance because the key’s about 2 foot long. Y’know…’
Yes, ladies and gentleman. We are in student heaven. The reason the trees are all covered in dramatic cobwebs I realise is not because the Queensland Maneating spider has been imported to this neck of Manchester but because of Halloween. There was a bit of a party that night. Just 500 or so.
Fourteen rooms of students (as Mike always calls them, y’know wot I mean?) and, well, it is quite an interesting situation. The students have no intention of showing us any of the bedrooms since they love the place. And I really mean love it. This is an ad for rooms that is current: http://manchester.gumtree.com/manches...
Four nice rooms available in Slade Hall, the oldest house in Manchester. The rooms are in the Annexe, which is a more recent addition, though both the houses mix together and all communal areas are shared between everyone. The Annexe has just been refurbished, so all walls are freshly painted, new flooring, etc.
House is an eclectic mix of artists, musicians, djs, students, hippies, and general laid back people who enjoy everything from reggae to football. We are looking for four new housemates to be our friends rather than just housemates. We enjoy camping, adventures, sitting round the fire in the garden, brewing beer, music and other fun stuff :) Everyone is usually busy in the week with work, but we enjoy the weekends. Must love music :)
Slade Hall is a big old Tudor mansion, bit wonky and creaky but full of life and character. It's separated into two houses with ten people in the main house and five in the annexe when full up. Both houses have got communal living rooms, kitchens, bathrooms, showers, piano, etc.
We have an Ultra super massive garden with space to grow vegetables and secret wooded area/secret garden, swings, hammocks, football/frisbee pitch, BBQ, shelter/outdoor living area, lots of trees, birds, butterflies.
We are in south Manchester , not far from fallowfield, rusholme, longsight, levenshulme, gorton. You can get to town, universities, and stockport really easily in 15/20 mins on the busses, which come every 5 - 10 minutes. Chorlton in about 20mins by bus.
Rooms cost 270 a month, and bills are split, 40 per month for everything included. Rooms vary in size, and all come furnished with beds, wardrobes, desks, drawers, etc...the usual stuff.
We're looking for someone who likes good music, hates drama, has a good sense of humour, likes to be outside, and isn't an idiot :)
no d*ckheads, no -ists, no -philes, plenty of -isms
If you'd like to come for a look round and meet everyone, give Pete a ring - :)
So, they are not cooperating with viewings, the for sale sign hasn’t a chance. But they don’t seem to understand that only one sort of person could possibly think of buying the place: somebody who wants to let it out to bunches of students. They are in fact, completely safe. We hate it as much as they love it.
But much as I hate it, you read that Gumtree ad for the rooms for rent and, well, doesn’t it tug at you somewhere? A whole community really does revolve around this extraordinary building. Not just the people who live there, it reaches much further than that. I had started off wondering if somebody might buy it and spend a million or two doing it up as a bed and breakfast. Luckily it is for now in quite the wrong part of town for that to be a sensible proposition.
The people who built this place between about the 12th and 17th centuries must surely have been so proud, so full of loyalty to what they had made. It is the most splendid thing that, hundreds of years later it is still loved with a passion by people who feel it is part of their being. I hope they win the day.
Oh. And if you want to know about the ghosts, go here: http://www.budman.u-net.com/sgsweb/Sl...
I could go on, but you get the drift. I read this when I was very little and I kind of thought I knew all about England, but it turns out there is a lot left unanswered in the book.
Perhaps a revised edition?
September 13, 2021
An irreverent mini-history of the UK, which led to frequent, sensible chuckles of the brief nose exhale variety, along with many grimaces of the 'Bloody hell, mate, you can't say that' kind.
Part surreal and silly Spike Milligan, part deadpan Douglas Adams and 100% Geoffrey of Monmouth if he had even the slightest sense of self awareness, it was genuinely funny, but suffers from two major Bad Things:
1. 'I don't get it'. Those not intimate with the entirity of British history may be left scratching their heads at some of the jokes. My own history lessons went Romans, Dickensian Poor Law and World Wars, with literally no other details in between, and my own readings of History has apparently more blank chunks than I realised, all of which left me puzzled and feeling rather dim.
2. It's not aged well. Published in 1930, this is very much a Pax Brittania loving book. Beside some earliar cringy words on the Irish, once Sellar gets to the colonies a lot of the humour is bled out when viewed from the more modern perspective of, well, basic human decency. Call me stuffy and PC, but the Zulu genocide doesn't seem like the best set up for a joke, especially when I honestly can't tell how much salt Mr Sellars is pinching. Also, the previous problem comes into play again, since my school also took an evasive 'Who, dear? Empire, dear? Me, dear? How very dare you!' approach to our pillaging in Pith, leaving me not only uncomfortable but equally confused (Jesus, I'm showing my age with that reference).
Thankfully, these two Bad Things have pinpointed where my gaps in knowledge are, and given me a much needed kick up the arse to explore those neglected moments in my country's history, which is a Good Thing.
A somewhat uneasy but amusing book, I'd reccomend it to lovers of dry humour or any history students exploring our old colonial attitudes; but for anyone who wants the funny and fully informative, try Horrible Histories instead.
Part surreal and silly Spike Milligan, part deadpan Douglas Adams and 100% Geoffrey of Monmouth if he had even the slightest sense of self awareness, it was genuinely funny, but suffers from two major Bad Things:
1. 'I don't get it'. Those not intimate with the entirity of British history may be left scratching their heads at some of the jokes. My own history lessons went Romans, Dickensian Poor Law and World Wars, with literally no other details in between, and my own readings of History has apparently more blank chunks than I realised, all of which left me puzzled and feeling rather dim.
2. It's not aged well. Published in 1930, this is very much a Pax Brittania loving book. Beside some earliar cringy words on the Irish, once Sellar gets to the colonies a lot of the humour is bled out when viewed from the more modern perspective of, well, basic human decency. Call me stuffy and PC, but the Zulu genocide doesn't seem like the best set up for a joke, especially when I honestly can't tell how much salt Mr Sellars is pinching. Also, the previous problem comes into play again, since my school also took an evasive 'Who, dear? Empire, dear? Me, dear? How very dare you!' approach to our pillaging in Pith, leaving me not only uncomfortable but equally confused (Jesus, I'm showing my age with that reference).
Thankfully, these two Bad Things have pinpointed where my gaps in knowledge are, and given me a much needed kick up the arse to explore those neglected moments in my country's history, which is a Good Thing.
A somewhat uneasy but amusing book, I'd reccomend it to lovers of dry humour or any history students exploring our old colonial attitudes; but for anyone who wants the funny and fully informative, try Horrible Histories instead.
September 15, 2011
This is one of my favourite books of all time; silly, harmless, educated humour at its best. It plays on all of the English history that you would traditionally have been taught at school and promptly forgotten, presenting it in the slightly hazy jumble stereotypical of someone who went through the education system a little longer ago than they'd care to remember!
The humour is reminiscent of Monty Python, as is often said. But Seller & Yeatman are less absurdist, though the inherently childish silliness is the same. Obviously, no real knowledge of history is needed to enjoy this book!
It keeps vaguely to the mock-format of a textbook; there are "exam questions" at the end of each chapter, which are just as funny as the chapters themselves, and get progressively more ridiculous as you go on.
Every time I return to 1006 and All That, I am left with tears of laughter rolling down my cheeks; I can't think of any higher recommendation than that! It is truly medicinal for the soul.
The humour is reminiscent of Monty Python, as is often said. But Seller & Yeatman are less absurdist, though the inherently childish silliness is the same. Obviously, no real knowledge of history is needed to enjoy this book!
It keeps vaguely to the mock-format of a textbook; there are "exam questions" at the end of each chapter, which are just as funny as the chapters themselves, and get progressively more ridiculous as you go on.
Every time I return to 1006 and All That, I am left with tears of laughter rolling down my cheeks; I can't think of any higher recommendation than that! It is truly medicinal for the soul.
August 30, 2007
A blithe send-up of the sort of English history that was force-fed to generations of Britons. With test questions such as:
"Describe in excessive detail:
a) The advantages of the Black Death
b) The fate of the Duke of Clarence
c) A Surfeit"
In short, the more I read of British humor circa 1870-1960, the more I understand where Monty Python was coming from.
"Describe in excessive detail:
a) The advantages of the Black Death
b) The fate of the Duke of Clarence
c) A Surfeit"
In short, the more I read of British humor circa 1870-1960, the more I understand where Monty Python was coming from.
November 14, 2020
“1066 and all that” is no classic history book. It is a comedy of sorts, a book of puns for the historically enlightened.
Quite a few of the jokes were certainly lost on me, yet it was a fun read in a particular style, which it must be said exercises the brain in separating the laughable from the truth. It lays excellent groundwork for anyone who cares to take interest in the different monarchs of England and Great Britain - as it spans from the Danes to practically the modern day (it was published in the 1930’s).
Much as I found Douglas Adams (author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) to write with a particular sense of humour, here too - it’s a hoot until it’s too much of the “same ol’ same ol’”. The book is precisely the right “shortness” to avoid boredom or annoyance, and makes for a quick amusing read.
(Needless to say the Folio Society edition is impeccable, amusingly illustrated and both the binding and the paper are of top notch quality.)
Quite a few of the jokes were certainly lost on me, yet it was a fun read in a particular style, which it must be said exercises the brain in separating the laughable from the truth. It lays excellent groundwork for anyone who cares to take interest in the different monarchs of England and Great Britain - as it spans from the Danes to practically the modern day (it was published in the 1930’s).
Much as I found Douglas Adams (author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) to write with a particular sense of humour, here too - it’s a hoot until it’s too much of the “same ol’ same ol’”. The book is precisely the right “shortness” to avoid boredom or annoyance, and makes for a quick amusing read.
(Needless to say the Folio Society edition is impeccable, amusingly illustrated and both the binding and the paper are of top notch quality.)
Read
February 24, 2023I can’t remember exactly when I came across this title, maybe in college. It’s a short, silly recounting of British history, which produced a few mild chuckles. I thought it reflected attitudes generally for history, where fact and comedic fiction blend so nicely together. I also remember John Belushi’s famous exhortation in the film Animal House that referenced the German bombing of Pearl Harbor. I think ignorance is actually more than bliss. It takes so much time and energy to learn that which time erodes from memory so easily. Really, why bother in the first place.
May 5, 2009
Hilarious, though probably better to read a little at a time, and also if you have some vague idea of real English history. Ever since reading this I have wanted to write an American version, called, naturally, 1776 and All That.
July 16, 2008
For pheasant, read peasant throughout.
July 29, 2016
This has always been a Christmas book to me, because there was a copy in the house of a relative we used to visit at this time of year when I was a child. [Here I could really do with a small font.] But I'd never actually finished it before. I must have been seven or eight when I secretly abandoned it. I wouldn't have been able to bring myself to admit to anyone that I didn't understand all of it, because I was the sort of smartarse Hermione kid that never happened to. Even now it's been surprisingly difficult to put those last few sentences into words.
Well, if I went back in time I would tell her that even with a masters degree and other bits and bobs on the CV that indicate knowing considerably more than average about these things, I didn't get every single joke.
- Look, even here on page two, where it says the Romans "defeated the Ancient Britons by unfair means, such as battering rams, tortoises, hippocausts, centipedes, axes and bundles..." I still don't know what they're getting at with 'bundles', and I wouldn't have understood about the tortoises before I saw a film called Gladiator, which starred an actor everybody else fancied but who I thought was boring and not very good looking at all. The film was still quite exciting though.
*flicks pages*
Ooh, but I bet you'll get this one because of that book about the royal family. "Henry I was famous for his handwriting" - yours is going to be really good soon, but not just yet - "and was therefore called Henry Beau-Geste."
- Henry The First Beauclerc!
- Yes, very good.
- But what's Beau-Geste?
- Oh, sorry, yes, you won't see that till later, in the lists of classics in the backs of other books. To be honest I can't remember exactly right now - I haven't read it - but I think it's a late Victorian or Edwardian adventure novel about some gentleman rogue. Anyway, in the same paragraph, here's another bit you might know. You'll have read about it more recently than I have... who was it again who really died of a surfeit of lampreys? They do keep making jokes about it all over the place in here. It gets a bit boring, though it would have been a good one if they'd used it less.
-------
Basically, the history in here is a lot less basic than it used to be. Lists of English kings and their deeds are no longer staples of school curricula as they were for the authors before 1930, and this stuff is familiar only to particularly geeky children, people who've studied history at a higher level, or fiends for historical biographies. A lot of it does work for me now, although most of the eighteenth and nineteenth century wars went over my head. It was pretty much all political history back then, though there’s a welcome early interpolation of one of my favourite topics, the history of pre-modern popular culture, in a Test Question: “Intone interminably (but inaudibly)…. ii. Cuccu”
And here again, I run into a reference to Ramillies Wigs. This year they’ve popped up several times, though previously I hadn’t seen them so-called outside books on the history of fashion.
I had no idea that the term 'the sick man of Europe' was in use as far back as the 30s (when of course it didn't mean Britain, who were then, as it says, Top Nation) - I' d assumed it was a 1970s coinage.
It’s so gratifying when the book still does what it was supposed to 85 years ago, when you realise that other people did secretly sort-of-conflate things. Pilgrim’s Progress and the Pilgim Fathers: same century, same hats, same-ish Puritanism, why not? And Prince Rupert of Hentzau’s role in the Civil War (though they missed out his yellow checked trousers). I’d completely forgotten the effort I once put in to remembering the difference between Robert Louis Stevenson and George Stephenson. (The George five pound notes were too late to help.) However they should have known that it wasn't 'the Siege of Sir Pastobol', but the Siege of Sebastian, and it had lots of arrows. They mentioned the Diet of Worms (in a question "Estimate the medical prowess of the period with reference to"), but not - as I honestly thought for years as a child - that it was a form of torture (the only food made available is live worms; eat them or starve...It took years to correct the impression because I kept skipping paragraphs about it, not wanting to know any more.)
And I am perenially amused by the idea that people (such as monks at the Reformation) should jolly well realise when a named historical period is over and get on and change.
It can be a frustrating book when it confuses you about something you thought you knew perfectly well before. If you'd asked me this afternoon which one of Perkin Warbeck and Lambert Simnel was executed and which sent to work in the royal kitchens I might have been able to say. Now I really don't know without looking it up again. (Ah yes, Simnel, cake, kitchen, that helps.)
Sometimes it is really funny. I particularly loved Henry II shouting “Who will rid me of this Chesterton beast?”, Warwick the Kingmaker taking application forms, and this question:
“How would you have attempted to deal with:
a) The Venomous Bead
b) A Mabinogion or Wapentake? (Be quick.)”
It is seriously jam-packed with references and even if you more or less know your stuff, you need to be awake. These days it isn’t so much a satire of school lessons as a collection of in-jokes for historians.
(I also had an idea to write a satirical review of this which po-facedly takes issue with various things for being colonialist, offensive and anglo-centric. But I couldn’t quite be bothered, rather like with the review of The Infatuations I’ve meant to write for aaages which treats it as a comeback album from Fairground Attraction for which they’ve lazily used the same cover art as for their first. Because publishers should know the history of their images better…)
Well, if I went back in time I would tell her that even with a masters degree and other bits and bobs on the CV that indicate knowing considerably more than average about these things, I didn't get every single joke.
- Look, even here on page two, where it says the Romans "defeated the Ancient Britons by unfair means, such as battering rams, tortoises, hippocausts, centipedes, axes and bundles..." I still don't know what they're getting at with 'bundles', and I wouldn't have understood about the tortoises before I saw a film called Gladiator, which starred an actor everybody else fancied but who I thought was boring and not very good looking at all. The film was still quite exciting though.
*flicks pages*
Ooh, but I bet you'll get this one because of that book about the royal family. "Henry I was famous for his handwriting" - yours is going to be really good soon, but not just yet - "and was therefore called Henry Beau-Geste."
- Henry The First Beauclerc!
- Yes, very good.
- But what's Beau-Geste?
- Oh, sorry, yes, you won't see that till later, in the lists of classics in the backs of other books. To be honest I can't remember exactly right now - I haven't read it - but I think it's a late Victorian or Edwardian adventure novel about some gentleman rogue. Anyway, in the same paragraph, here's another bit you might know. You'll have read about it more recently than I have... who was it again who really died of a surfeit of lampreys? They do keep making jokes about it all over the place in here. It gets a bit boring, though it would have been a good one if they'd used it less.
-------
Basically, the history in here is a lot less basic than it used to be. Lists of English kings and their deeds are no longer staples of school curricula as they were for the authors before 1930, and this stuff is familiar only to particularly geeky children, people who've studied history at a higher level, or fiends for historical biographies. A lot of it does work for me now, although most of the eighteenth and nineteenth century wars went over my head. It was pretty much all political history back then, though there’s a welcome early interpolation of one of my favourite topics, the history of pre-modern popular culture, in a Test Question: “Intone interminably (but inaudibly)…. ii. Cuccu”
And here again, I run into a reference to Ramillies Wigs. This year they’ve popped up several times, though previously I hadn’t seen them so-called outside books on the history of fashion.
I had no idea that the term 'the sick man of Europe' was in use as far back as the 30s (when of course it didn't mean Britain, who were then, as it says, Top Nation) - I' d assumed it was a 1970s coinage.
It’s so gratifying when the book still does what it was supposed to 85 years ago, when you realise that other people did secretly sort-of-conflate things. Pilgrim’s Progress and the Pilgim Fathers: same century, same hats, same-ish Puritanism, why not? And Prince Rupert of Hentzau’s role in the Civil War (though they missed out his yellow checked trousers). I’d completely forgotten the effort I once put in to remembering the difference between Robert Louis Stevenson and George Stephenson. (The George five pound notes were too late to help.) However they should have known that it wasn't 'the Siege of Sir Pastobol', but the Siege of Sebastian, and it had lots of arrows. They mentioned the Diet of Worms (in a question "Estimate the medical prowess of the period with reference to"), but not - as I honestly thought for years as a child - that it was a form of torture (the only food made available is live worms; eat them or starve...It took years to correct the impression because I kept skipping paragraphs about it, not wanting to know any more.)
And I am perenially amused by the idea that people (such as monks at the Reformation) should jolly well realise when a named historical period is over and get on and change.
It can be a frustrating book when it confuses you about something you thought you knew perfectly well before. If you'd asked me this afternoon which one of Perkin Warbeck and Lambert Simnel was executed and which sent to work in the royal kitchens I might have been able to say. Now I really don't know without looking it up again. (Ah yes, Simnel, cake, kitchen, that helps.)
Sometimes it is really funny. I particularly loved Henry II shouting “Who will rid me of this Chesterton beast?”, Warwick the Kingmaker taking application forms, and this question:
“How would you have attempted to deal with:
a) The Venomous Bead
b) A Mabinogion or Wapentake? (Be quick.)”
It is seriously jam-packed with references and even if you more or less know your stuff, you need to be awake. These days it isn’t so much a satire of school lessons as a collection of in-jokes for historians.
(I also had an idea to write a satirical review of this which po-facedly takes issue with various things for being colonialist, offensive and anglo-centric. But I couldn’t quite be bothered, rather like with the review of The Infatuations I’ve meant to write for aaages which treats it as a comeback album from Fairground Attraction for which they’ve lazily used the same cover art as for their first. Because publishers should know the history of their images better…)
September 13, 2018
The back cover of my edition of 1066 AND ALL THAT exults: "It merges Clio [muse of History] and Bob Benchley [early 1930's MGM wit]." Noel Coward testified: "I consider it one of the most enchantingly funny books I have ever read." And indeed, this may be the origin of all those parody textbooks and course notes with their screwy review questions at the end. It was only 1931, but we get a back-of-book examination, cheekily entitled "Test Paper V," with questions like: " 'An army marches on its stomach.' (Napoleon). Illustrate and explain." - and - "Would it have been a Good Thing if Wolfe had succeeded in writing Gray's Anatomy rather than taking Quebec?"
Actually, whether something is a Good Thing or not a Good Thing is very important to this tongue-in-cheek opus of around 110 pages. Another important concept is who in the world gets to be "top nation" and for how long, although this term is inconsistently capitalized. (I'd have a severe word or two with author W.C. Sellar, but it being over 85 years since this little *bijou* first saw print, I'd better not.)
If you like this kind of thing, it's great fun. And after all, we are promised a survey of English history with only two (2 !) dates to be memorized. But when a parody comes along, it helps to know what is being parodied, such as calling Australians in the Great War "AZTECS." (Don't tell anyone, but they're punning on ANZAC.) Otherwise I would have awarded five stars.
Anyway, 1066 AND ALL THAT has been in print all this time and is cheap, when it isn't funny it at least is puckish, and when it's neither it provokes wry smiles. I say go for it, especially now that WE are top nation.
Well, in 1931 anyway.
Actually, whether something is a Good Thing or not a Good Thing is very important to this tongue-in-cheek opus of around 110 pages. Another important concept is who in the world gets to be "top nation" and for how long, although this term is inconsistently capitalized. (I'd have a severe word or two with author W.C. Sellar, but it being over 85 years since this little *bijou* first saw print, I'd better not.)
If you like this kind of thing, it's great fun. And after all, we are promised a survey of English history with only two (2 !) dates to be memorized. But when a parody comes along, it helps to know what is being parodied, such as calling Australians in the Great War "AZTECS." (Don't tell anyone, but they're punning on ANZAC.) Otherwise I would have awarded five stars.
Anyway, 1066 AND ALL THAT has been in print all this time and is cheap, when it isn't funny it at least is puckish, and when it's neither it provokes wry smiles. I say go for it, especially now that WE are top nation.
Well, in 1931 anyway.
February 3, 2011
History, these authors point out, isn't really what happened: It's what's remembered. So that's why everybody out there has a garbled idea of the history of his or her nation, as Sellar and Yeatman present here of Jolly Olde Englande.
Most intriguing throughout is the framing of all English history in the guise of whether England was Top Nation at the time these events occurred. I'm sure every nation gauges its history by such a standard; knowing when and why one was Top Nation is important for the ego, fragile as they may be. It's a good book to read to remind ourselves that we're not at all as educated as we think we are, and that we ought to be more humble about our knowledge and about the history we believe our nations possess.
Most intriguing throughout is the framing of all English history in the guise of whether England was Top Nation at the time these events occurred. I'm sure every nation gauges its history by such a standard; knowing when and why one was Top Nation is important for the ego, fragile as they may be. It's a good book to read to remind ourselves that we're not at all as educated as we think we are, and that we ought to be more humble about our knowledge and about the history we believe our nations possess.
May 5, 2011
This book drove me mental, and I wish it hadn't. I wish I had been able to appreciate its silliness without being driven crazy by all the incorrect dates and facts. I do appreciate what the author was trying to do, but apparently I'm too much of an obsessive history nerd to make it more than several pages into something like this without wanting to tear my hair out. It's a shame.
June 17, 2016
Before there was Monty Python mocking “The Empire,” there was this book. When I first read it, I knew enough to laugh at some of the obvious deviations from straight history. Things about the American Revolution and King George inviting the colonists to a tea party and their victory marking the end of English being spoken there.
But the more I have learned, the more I can appreciate the depth of the satire. Just a well-done little gem.
I should end this review now, but if you are in doubt about whether to indulge in this book here are a few excerpts:
“Chapter XXVIII…The War of the Roses…Noticing suddenly that the Middle Ages were coming to an end, the Barons now made a stupendous effort to revive the old Feudal amenities of Sackage, Carnage and Wreakage and stave off the Tudors for a time…The achieved this by a very clever plan known as The War of the Roses…One of the rules in the War of the Roses was that everybody was really King but that Edmund Mortimer really ought to be: any Baron who wished to be considered King was allowed to apply at Warwick Kingmaker’s where he was made to fill up a form, answering the following questions (hilarious but not excerpted)….
“Chapter XVI…Owing to the inability of the Queen’s ministers to amuse the Crown, superhuman attempts were now made by her Majesty’s generals at home and abroad to provide military diversions. These took the form of a wave of Justifiable Wars, including: (with descriptions not included)
War with China
War with Afghanistan
Sheikh War
2nd Burmese War
War against Abyssinia
War against A Shantee
War against Zulus
All these attempts having failed, news was brought to the Queen that the Fiji Islands were annexed to the British ‘by the desire of the inhabitants.’ At this point, according to some (seditious) historians, Her Majesty’s lip was observed to tremble.”
And Chapter LXII quoted in full
“A Bad Thing…America was thus clearly top nation, and History came to a .”
But the more I have learned, the more I can appreciate the depth of the satire. Just a well-done little gem.
I should end this review now, but if you are in doubt about whether to indulge in this book here are a few excerpts:
“Chapter XXVIII…The War of the Roses…Noticing suddenly that the Middle Ages were coming to an end, the Barons now made a stupendous effort to revive the old Feudal amenities of Sackage, Carnage and Wreakage and stave off the Tudors for a time…The achieved this by a very clever plan known as The War of the Roses…One of the rules in the War of the Roses was that everybody was really King but that Edmund Mortimer really ought to be: any Baron who wished to be considered King was allowed to apply at Warwick Kingmaker’s where he was made to fill up a form, answering the following questions (hilarious but not excerpted)….
“Chapter XVI…Owing to the inability of the Queen’s ministers to amuse the Crown, superhuman attempts were now made by her Majesty’s generals at home and abroad to provide military diversions. These took the form of a wave of Justifiable Wars, including: (with descriptions not included)
War with China
War with Afghanistan
Sheikh War
2nd Burmese War
War against Abyssinia
War against A Shantee
War against Zulus
All these attempts having failed, news was brought to the Queen that the Fiji Islands were annexed to the British ‘by the desire of the inhabitants.’ At this point, according to some (seditious) historians, Her Majesty’s lip was observed to tremble.”
And Chapter LXII quoted in full
“A Bad Thing…America was thus clearly top nation, and History came to a .”
September 18, 2013
Love this book. It's hilarious in that dry British way. Please note- it's much funnier if you're already familiar with British history as much of the book is devoted to a willful and intentional misinterpretation of fact.
August 24, 2015
I can't believe it took me so long to get around to reading this book. Every sentence is a wry, British morsel of comic gold for the history nerd.
June 11, 2019
“James I slobbered at the mouth and had favourites; he was thus a Bad King. He had however, a very logical and tidy mind, and one of the first things he did was to have Sir Walter Raleigh executed for being left over from the previous reign.”
This book suffers a little from age but is still quite funny. There are a number of jokes that I’m sure I didn’t get, but the ones I did I thought were very clever! I especially liked the tests at the end of every chapter, and the family tree which I felt was a very accurate portrayal.
A fun, short book for Anglophiles who see the humor in English history.
See more of my reviews: Blog // Instagram
This book suffers a little from age but is still quite funny. There are a number of jokes that I’m sure I didn’t get, but the ones I did I thought were very clever! I especially liked the tests at the end of every chapter, and the family tree which I felt was a very accurate portrayal.
A fun, short book for Anglophiles who see the humor in English history.
See more of my reviews: Blog // Instagram
August 31, 2022
Anyone British born before 1960, in the good old days of memorizing historical facts, would find this book hilarious. But most Americans wouldn't be able to tell the difference between "truth" and a deliberate distortion of it. Even watching The White Princess and reading all the books about Henry VIII's wives and reading Shakespeare's history plays wouldn't help. This is not Monty Python in prose. You should enjoy real history -- big doses of it -- before sampling an erudite parody such as this.
June 28, 2025
W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman’s 1066 and All That is not a history book. It’s a comic exorcism of everything you were forced to remember — and promptly forgot — from your school history classes. I first read it in 2019, and what a revelation it was! History as it should have been taught: with irreverence, wit, and just the right amount of glorious confusion. For the last two days, I’ve been re-reading it, and every time I turn a page, it’s like reuniting with that one hilarious, subversive friend who can’t help puncturing pomposity with a pin.
The book is built around a brilliantly absurd premise — that English history is composed entirely of things that are “memorable.” Everything else, naturally, is “unmemorable” and can be safely forgotten. It begins with 1066 (the only date most people remember) and merrily gallops through monarchs, reforms, revolutions, and wars, stopping to explain why some kings were “Good” and others “Bad” (rarely anything in between). Queen Victoria, for instance, reigned “for 63 years because she was so very Victorian.”
This isn’t a parody of a history book — it’s a parody of the very idea of historical certainty. It ridicules the idea that school history is objective or reliable. With surreal headlines like “The Vague Wars” and “The Industrial Revelation,” and a cast of teachers, peasants, and kings reduced to slogans, this is less a timeline and more a brilliant theatre of misremembered facts.
For someone like me — who has waded through Simon Schama and nodded through A.J.P. Taylor — Sellar and Yeatman’s book is the perfect antidote: Monty Python meets The Oxford History of England. It reminds us that history is written, often arbitrarily taught, and usually mislearned. The running gags, the minimalist cartoons, and the deliberately muddled chronology aren’t just jokes — they’re satire. They’re commentary on how institutions manufacture memory and call it history.
And yet — hidden under all the jokes is a serious truth. That our historical “knowledge” is a product of what’s been repeated, simplified, moralized. Sellar and Yeatman know that. And they’ve written one of the funniest, smartest send-ups of national storytelling in print.
If history is a set of half-remembered jokes with footnotes, 1066 and All That is the ultimate punchline. A book to re-read, to gift, and to quote loudly at dinner parties — preferably while wearing a fake crown and declaiming about the “Wave of Beards” that swept across England.
Highly recommended for readers who know a little history — and want to laugh at every bit of it.
The book is built around a brilliantly absurd premise — that English history is composed entirely of things that are “memorable.” Everything else, naturally, is “unmemorable” and can be safely forgotten. It begins with 1066 (the only date most people remember) and merrily gallops through monarchs, reforms, revolutions, and wars, stopping to explain why some kings were “Good” and others “Bad” (rarely anything in between). Queen Victoria, for instance, reigned “for 63 years because she was so very Victorian.”
This isn’t a parody of a history book — it’s a parody of the very idea of historical certainty. It ridicules the idea that school history is objective or reliable. With surreal headlines like “The Vague Wars” and “The Industrial Revelation,” and a cast of teachers, peasants, and kings reduced to slogans, this is less a timeline and more a brilliant theatre of misremembered facts.
For someone like me — who has waded through Simon Schama and nodded through A.J.P. Taylor — Sellar and Yeatman’s book is the perfect antidote: Monty Python meets The Oxford History of England. It reminds us that history is written, often arbitrarily taught, and usually mislearned. The running gags, the minimalist cartoons, and the deliberately muddled chronology aren’t just jokes — they’re satire. They’re commentary on how institutions manufacture memory and call it history.
And yet — hidden under all the jokes is a serious truth. That our historical “knowledge” is a product of what’s been repeated, simplified, moralized. Sellar and Yeatman know that. And they’ve written one of the funniest, smartest send-ups of national storytelling in print.
If history is a set of half-remembered jokes with footnotes, 1066 and All That is the ultimate punchline. A book to re-read, to gift, and to quote loudly at dinner parties — preferably while wearing a fake crown and declaiming about the “Wave of Beards” that swept across England.
Highly recommended for readers who know a little history — and want to laugh at every bit of it.
November 15, 2011
Having recently read extracts from Jane Austen's teenage satirical work The History of England, I thought it was time to re-visit this classic work, first published in 1930. Jane Austen's work on the same theme reminded me of how much I had enjoyed reading this book more than thirty years ago.
It is a quick read: sixty-two chapters in 123 pages, from Chapter 1, in which Caesar invades Britain, to the end of history, which according to Chapter 62, occurred after the Great War and the "Peace to End Peace". It was then that America became "top nation" and history came to a full stop.
It is also an entertaining read. It relies for its entertainment value on the reader having at some point being taught English history and then having forgotten almost everything that was learned. As the "Compulsory Preface" puts it:
History is not what you thought. It is what you can remember. All other history defeats itself.
As I read this today, some bits had me rolling around the floor laughing. Other bits I didn't get at all. Clearly, there's plenty of English history I was never taught, because the references meant nothing to me, even in the bizarre, bastardised form set out in this work.
So, having reacquainted myself with 1066 and All That, I see that there's not a great deal its authors share with Jane Austen, other than a knowledge of English history, a gift for wit and satire and a wonderful irreverence.
This is worth reading for novelty value only. It will make no sense at all to a reader who hasn't been taught English history at some point in their life. It also helps to have some familiarity with the works of William Shakespeare. Amongst other things, this will explain why references to Henry IV as a "split King" - that is, Part I and Part II - are actually funny!
September 7, 2009
Delightfully muddled book of English history as described by English people who have not had to pass a history test in quite some time.
"The Boston Tea Party
One day when George III was insane he heard that the Americans never had afternoon tea. This made him very obstinate and he invited them all to a compulsory tea-party at Boston; the Americans, however, started by pouring the tea into Boston Harbour and went on pouring things into Boston Harbour until they were quite Independent, thus causing the United States."
"The Boston Tea Party
One day when George III was insane he heard that the Americans never had afternoon tea. This made him very obstinate and he invited them all to a compulsory tea-party at Boston; the Americans, however, started by pouring the tea into Boston Harbour and went on pouring things into Boston Harbour until they were quite Independent, thus causing the United States."
January 9, 2014
I have to re-read this periodically because it makes me laugh. And, as I have discovered since first reading it some 30 years ago, the more English history you know the funnier it is. It is a book for grinning and laughing out loud over.
September 25, 2011
This is one I don't even lend out unless I am sure it will be appreciated. An all-time favourite in whatever edition (the first edition was left in a taxi cab and lost), an absolute riot I found, oddly enough, in the back of a taxi in a strange city...
November 25, 2014
It's still funny after first reading more than 50 years ago. I always liked the exam questions but the whole book is a delight.
November 12, 2020
Genius. Revisited for some light relief at a time when we all need some. It's such a good representation of the way history used to be taught (perhaps would not mean so much to a younger generation, as they now seem to teach history in a more episodic and less connected way). There are so many funny lines, and the satire is so gentle that I am sure those at whom it is partly aimed (the British myth school of history) never even spotted it. For instance, "It was in the eighteenth century that Indian history started" - this genuinely is what some people probably still think. Other favourites include "The country was now almost entirely inhabited by Saxons and was therefore renamed England", and many other things which are, as the authors promise, more memorable than the actual history - the garbled versions of exam papers for which we had to learn lists of things like the causes of the First World War (still a bit of a mystery to me), and the changes to the franchise in the Reform Bills of the 19th century. No doubt our current government would wish to censor the chapter on the Industrial Revolution, with its single sentence critique of capitalism. A tonic during dark days.
June 7, 2013
Good British humour of the best kind; no holds barred and mocking n institution. In this case the institution being mocked is the 'traditional' style of English history teaching.
I googled the authors, half expecting to find some links to Monty Python. Yes, THAT sort of humour.
While I enjoyed it thoroughly, both the text and the illustrative illustrations, anyone without a through understanding of classically taught English history may be quite confused at times. I was quite confused a lot of the time, though it did not especially bother me.
the thing about this humour is that it helps to know what is being mocked.
An example is on page 61, where Henry eighth is being mocked; most people would know that'Katherine the Arrogant' is a dig at Katherine of Aragorn, and that it was WAY too early to have Jane Austin come into the story.
But there are many similar statements that I suspect are equally untrue but I do not know for sure.
Enjoyed it thoroughly nonetheless.
I googled the authors, half expecting to find some links to Monty Python. Yes, THAT sort of humour.
While I enjoyed it thoroughly, both the text and the illustrative illustrations, anyone without a through understanding of classically taught English history may be quite confused at times. I was quite confused a lot of the time, though it did not especially bother me.
the thing about this humour is that it helps to know what is being mocked.
An example is on page 61, where Henry eighth is being mocked; most people would know that'Katherine the Arrogant' is a dig at Katherine of Aragorn, and that it was WAY too early to have Jane Austin come into the story.
But there are many similar statements that I suspect are equally untrue but I do not know for sure.
Enjoyed it thoroughly nonetheless.
April 8, 2014
This is one of the funniest books in the English language (see my reviews of Stella Gibbons' 'Cold Comfort Farm' and J.K.Jerome's 'Three Men in a Boat' for the others!).
It is a perfect pastiche of British (ie English) history as taught to generations of British school kids from the Victorian era until the late 1960's. In point of fact it wasn't that different when I encountered 'History' at secondary school in the early 1980's. That was when my Dad gave me this wonderful book. It made me howl with laughter. As I progressed through the history curriculum and repeatedly revisited '1066 and All That' I howled even more!
Its donkey's years since I last read this but it 'pinged' up on 'Good Reads Reccomends' so I felt I must write a review and then download a copy in order to enjoy it again!
It is a perfect pastiche of British (ie English) history as taught to generations of British school kids from the Victorian era until the late 1960's. In point of fact it wasn't that different when I encountered 'History' at secondary school in the early 1980's. That was when my Dad gave me this wonderful book. It made me howl with laughter. As I progressed through the history curriculum and repeatedly revisited '1066 and All That' I howled even more!
Its donkey's years since I last read this but it 'pinged' up on 'Good Reads Reccomends' so I felt I must write a review and then download a copy in order to enjoy it again!
August 31, 2021
I re-read this, and here are two things that I realised:
a) I didn't understand 1% of this when I originally read it aged ~12. I only understood about 85% of the references/jokes in this read through!
b) This is a surprisingly intelligent work, because behind the silliness and satire is both an interesting historiographical point (conflation of memory and history) as well as critique of English historiography.
Very fun.
a) I didn't understand 1% of this when I originally read it aged ~12. I only understood about 85% of the references/jokes in this read through!
b) This is a surprisingly intelligent work, because behind the silliness and satire is both an interesting historiographical point (conflation of memory and history) as well as critique of English historiography.
Very fun.
December 8, 2011
A short and amusing volume of all the English history you will ever need to remember, and a clever dig at how history used to be taught in schools. The more up you are on your English history, the more you will appreciate and enjoy it. Some of the one liners are very funny. I laughed out loud lots, so beware of reading it in public places. Highly recommended.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 414 reviews