1066 And All That
Before anyone feels compelled to point it out, ‘1066 And All That’ is not the full title of this book. It is (get ready): 1066 And All That A Memorable History of ENGLAND comprising all the parts you can remember including 103 GOOD Things, 5 Bad KINGS, and 2 GENUINE DATES. The authors of this outstanding text are Walter Carruthers Sellar, Aegrot Oxon and Robert Julian Yeatman, Failed MA etc, Oxon, and the illustrations are by John Reynolds, Gent. The facing page to the title page is an illustration, of a king looking at the partly exposed leg of a lady, wearing a Magna Garter (of course). Finally, my edition is covered on the outside with ink splashes, and ink blots can be seen on the edges of the pages, as well as a huge ink blot on the back. Incidentally, I read that ‘aegrotat’ meant passed without taking an examination as a result of illness, which was the case for Sellar, and while Yeatman completed an Oxford BA, he couldn’t afford the fee to upgrade this to an MA!
Let’s proceed. There are LXII chapters. In case you haven’t got the point, there is an Introduction by Ned Sherrin. Oh dear, don’t tell me you aren’t aware of Ned Sherrin. Quoting from Wikipedia, Ned Sherrin CBE (18 February 1931 – 1 October 2007) “was an English broadcaster, author and stage director. He qualified as a barrister and then worked in independent television before joining the BBC. He appeared in a variety of radio and television satirical shows and theatre shows, some of which he also directed.” Come on, now, we’re talking about Ned Sherrin, who back in 1962, was responsible for the first satirical television series, The Was The Week That Was, with David Frost and Millicent Martin. Ok? What! You never saw TWTWTW? You’ve never heard of it! This is getting depressing – or is it that I’m getting old?
Perhaps it will help if I quote the first paragraph of Ned Sherrin’s Introduction. “A couple of brand-new schoolboy howlers surfaced during 1989 in the GCSE examinations. ‘William I was crowned at the Abbey National.’ ‘Sir Anthony Eden was brought down by the Sewage crisis.’ Do you hear a faint echo? The howler is not the device which Walter Sellar and Julian Yeatman employed in 1066 and All That, but the book exploits a similar frail and confused recall of the salient facts of history”
Two paragraphs in, and were told “Have you heard of the journalist who complained he couldn’t get his stuff in because of Reuter’s cramp? Or “I’ve been looking over a paper on Othello, and one boy says Othello complained Desdemona played the trumpet in bed.” You need more from the Introduction? Two further pages along we read a comment from a Mrs Brownless about “an article I read in the Christ’s Hospital magazine called ‘The Blue’ about a man called James Whale. He had gone on Captain Cook’s voyage as a botanist and, after many adventurers, ended up as a science master at Christ’s Hospital. One of his pupils was one Coleridge. If you cast your mind back to the way you spoke about your teachers, and the reread ‘The Ancient Mariner’ I’m sure you’ll agree that James Whale inspired it in the same way Sellars teacher inspired 1066 and all that: he would make such memorable remarks as King John was a BAD THING.”
Now I am sure you realise this, but 1066 And All That was (and is) hilarious. When I first read it, it saved me from continuing to believe that history was boring. History had got off to a bad start in my life. At school my only recollection of history was the timetable periods when our history teacher would come into the room, start writing on the blackboard (in small letters), and continued to do so for the rest of the session. Our task was simple. Copy and memorise what he wrote, as it would be the basis of the exam at the end of the year.
Incidentally, that same teacher had one uncanny skill. If someone in the classroom began whispering, he could grab the blackboard duster (a piece of wood with a some felt on one side), turn and throw it at the offender: he was always right and he never missed. In fact, his performance with the duster is all that I remember from years of secondary level history!
My mother despaired at my attitude to a subject she thought important. First, she gave me a copy of Marshall’s Kings and Things. Described as a ‘lighthearted romp through British history, it was tolerable. It was years later I discovered H E Marshall was Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall, a lifetime history writer whose income came from her books, and was best known as the author of Our Island Story, a history described as being ‘for girls and boys’. Not yet discouraged by my continuing lack of interest in history, and determined to get me thinking, eventually my mother bought a copy of G M Trevelyan’s History of England and gave it to me. That red covered volume sat on a shelf for a long time. One day I picked it up and started reading – and really enjoyed it! I was careful not to let my mother know she’d triumphed.
Ned Sherrin’s Introduction to 1066 And All That was written for the 1990 edition, published 60 years after the first edition. Readers of the original version would have begun with the ‘Compulsory Preface’. This turns out to be very helpful. On the first page we learn “This is the only Memorable History of England, because all the history you can remember is in this book, which is the result of years of research in golf clubs, gun rooms, green rooms, etc. For instance, 2 out of the 4 Dates originally included were eliminated at the last moment, a research done at the Eton and Harrow match having revealed that they are not memorable.”
Those that survived this rigorous process were 55 BC “in which year Julius Caesar (the memorable Roman Emperor) landed, like all other successful invaders of these islands, at Thanet” and 1066, “this is also called the Battle of Hastingsand was when William I (1066) conquered England at the Battle of Senlac”. I realise you might be a tad confused at this point, so let me explain (via Wikipedia) that ‘Senlac Hill (or Senlac Ridge) is the generally accepted location in which Harold Goodwinson deployed his army for the Battle of Hastings on 14 October 1066. It is located near what is now the town of Battle, East Sussex.’ Everything clear now?
Once this history gets going, it is quick and pointed. There are ten chapters in the first part, which occupy a mere 15 pages. They cover Caesar invading Britain; Britain conquered again; the Conversion of England (through the landing of St Augustine – at Thanet, of course); Britain Conquered Again (by the Danes – it was the Saxons the first time around); Alfred the Cake (I’m sure you know all about his careless behaviour); Exgalahad and the British Navy (who conquered the Danes – I hadn’t known that); Lady Windermere, the lady of the lake; and Ethelread the Unready. After these preliminaries we meet Canute, who was initially a Bad King, until he recovered from getting wet sitting on the sea shore telling the tide to stop (which led him to utter the immortal phrase ‘paddle your own Canute’), and, in Chapter X, Edward the Confessor.
A first-time reader might be surprised to read that this history includes Test Papers. Test Paper 1 was tough. A sample question to convince you? Question 5 was in two parts:
“How angry would you be if it was suggested
- That the XIth Chap. Of the Consolations of Boethius was an interpolated palimpsest?
- That an Eisteddfod was an agricultural implement?”
Or perhaps you might like to consider Question 11:
Why do you know nothing at all about
- The Laws of Infangthief?
- Saint Pancras?”
Tricky, huh.
In the unlikely but still possible situation that you haven’t read 1066 And All That, I shouldn’t give away too many quiz questions, or you might prepare beforehand – especially as there is no information in the book. However, I think offering one more example is quite acceptable: this question comes from Quiz III:
“Do not draw a skotch-map [not a typo] of the Battle of Bannockburn, but write not more than three lines on the advantages and disadvantages of the inductive historical method with special relation to the ecclesiastical litigation in the earlier Lancastrian epochs.”
I’m tempted to add: ready, steady, go!
It would be easy to go on giving brief quotes, because they are all so good. Did you know, for example, that Henry IV Part 1 exhibited the head of Richard II in St Pauls Cathedral, and then patriotically abdicated in favour of Henry IV Part 2? Or, in case you aren’t aware of the way in which the US became independent, I should advise you:
“One day when George III was insane he heard 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 State. These were also partly caused by Dick Washington who defeated the English at Bunker’s Hill (‘with his little mashie’ as he told his father afterwards).”
I wonder if he had his cat with him at the time?
Confession time. Quite apart from the never-ending jokes, puns and crazy stories (like Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee being on account of the discovery of diamond mines at Camberley during the Borewore), 1066 And All That was also instrumental in teaching me some history. The absence of dates was a nuisance (but I couldn’t bring myself to write dates on my copy of the book). Despite this, in a mere 116 pages, I acquired a sufficient grasp of British history to keep me going all the way through my secondary education. Yes, it was very funny, but each page also managed to refer to people and events in time order, and actually helped me understand the place of the Napoleonic Wars (and the Gorilla War in Spain – oops, sorry!), and why people kept on about Disraeli and Gladstone.
In case you are thinking I am joking, in sympathy with Sellar and Yeatman’s work, I am not. It would be many years later I started reading more history and began to fill in the background to all the silly stories I had absorbed. At one stage I became enamoured of massive historical novels written by Harrison Ainsworth. I can’t imagine why they held my attention for a while, but I do admit 1066 And All That was an invaluable reference work, on such people as Bonnie Prince Charlie (although I’m not sure his many Scottish lovers did include Flora McNightingale, the fair maid of Perth), Amy Robsart, Lorna Doone, Annie Laurie, the Widow with Thumbs, etc. I suppose there could have been more than one Annie Laurie, and both were famous?
Sellar and Yeatman are compelling examples of the English approach to humour. They can take any story and by a combination of mis-spellings, exaggerations and confusions render the prosaic delightful. They stand at the beginning of a long line of British comedians, to be followed by Michael Flanders and Donald Swann, Terry Gilliam (and the other members of the Monty Python team), Spike Milligan (and the rest of the Goons), Kenneth Williams, Harry H Corbett, Frank Muir, Frankie Howerd, Michael Bentine, Bernard Cribbins, Sid James and Tony Hancock. These, and many others, demonstrated that very British ability to make us laugh at ourselves, subtly confuse our language and its use, and turn everyday stories and events into bumbling sagas of ineptitude and misunderstanding.
What led to this profusion of English humorous talent? I suspect one key contribution came from Punch (its full name was ‘Punch or The London Charivari’) a British weekly magazine of satire and humour established in 1841. From its heyday in the middle of the 19th Century, during which time it established the ‘cartoon’ as a form of humour, it was to start the careers of many writers. It was also the home, for fifty years, of John Tenniel, from 1850 – who was to become best known for his illustrations of the ‘Alice’ books.
A hundred years later, it was somewhat overtaken by Private Eye, a magazine well-known for its criticism and lampooning of public figures, and its investigative journalism into under-reported scandals and cover-ups. The Eye’s alumni have included Richard Ingrams, Willie Rushton, John Wells, Peter Cook, Claude Cockburn and Gerald Scarfe.
If writers like those in Punch offer one perspective on British humour, both Punch and Private Eye differ from 1066 And All That in one other important way. Unlike those two, 1066 And All is essentially simple fun. Punch and Private Eye have a sharper edge, focussed on puncturing the reputations of the boastful, dishonest and shallow.
Let’s give the final words to another history. In this case it is Kings and Queens by Eleanor and Herbert Farjeon, published in 1932, just two years after 1066 And All That:
William I – 1066 – by Eleanor Farjeon
William the first was the first of our kings
Not counting the Ethelreds, Egberts and things.
He had himself crowned and anointed and blessed
In ten-sixty – I needn’t tell you the rest.
Now being a Norman, King William the first
By the Saxons he conquered was hated and cursed
And they planned and they plotted far into the night
Which William could tell by the candles alight.
So William decided these rebels to quell
By ringing a curfew – a sort of a bell
And if any Saxon was found out of bed
After eight o’clock sharp it was “Off with his head!”
I don’t know what was in their glasses in the 1930s – gin and tonic or champagne – but it was a great time for witty literature about history for the young. Will the 2030s allow us to return to such innocent stuff?
