Why is a greater historical figure than Henry V AND Elizabeth I

...well, that’s what comic David Mitchell says. And it’s not a tall story on Would I Lie To You? – just one of his conclusions in a very unorthodox, but royally entertaining, history of kings and queens

Unruly: A History Of England’s Kings And Queens David Mitchell Michael Joseph £25

Henry II (1133-1189), great-grandson of William the Conqueror, was feared for his terrible temper. His most notorious outburst of anger ended in the murder of his own Archbishop of Canterbury, of course, Thomas à Becket. But on another, rather more comical occasion, he was so enraged on hearing someone say something complimentary about the King of Scotland, ‘with whom he was at that point displeased’, that he tore his own clothes off and ended up sitting on the floor chewing straw.

David Mitchell is the witty TV comedian well known for starring roles in programmes such as That Mitchell And Webb Look and Peep Show, as well as being team captain on the reliably funny Would I Lie To You? He has now turned his talents to writing a popular and racy account of England’s kings and queens, from the Anglo-Saxons through to Elizabeth I.

A sequel, if this one is successful, will no doubt follow, to take us bang up to date with King Charles III.

This is stuffed full of comical scenes and anecdotes, which only an author with a

‘Going on a Crusade was fashionable, like going vegan is now’

fine sense of the absurd could give us. It makes for a highly entertaining read.

Oh, and Henry II didn’t really cry out, ‘Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?’ in regard to his archbishop, since he would have been speaking Norman French anyway. And he would actually have known Thomas à Becket as plain Thomas Becket, the rather pretentious little ‘à’ only being added by a later 16th Century historian.

Not that the archbishop didn’t still have a pretty impressive sense of his own importance, says Mitchell, despite being of relatively humble stock. When he travelled to Paris to arrange the marriage between Henry II’s son, aged two, and the King of France’s daughter, aged one, Becket travelled with 24 outfits, 12 packhorses to carry his silver dinner service, eight wagons of baggage and horses with monkeys to ride them.

As Mitchell observes: ‘This last is particularly flamboyant and was surely Becket’s idea. “If I don’t have horses with monkeys riding them, the King of France won’t take me seriously!” He sounds like the 12th Century equivalent of a rap star.’

Mitchell even manages to make the Battle of Hastings seem more than a little preposterous, in retrospect.

For one thing, he says, historians have established that one reason the Norman archers were so ineffectual was that there were so few Anglo-Saxon archers firing back their own arrows that they, the Normans, quickly ran out of ammunition.

Warfare was indeed fairly primitive at this point.

And there really is black comedy in that whole business of poor King Harold carefully instructing his troops not to run off down the hill in pursuit of any apparently fleeing Normans, but to maintain their advantage on the high round of Senlac Hill.

‘I can almost taste Harold’s frustration coming down the centuries about this. I mean, literally the only thing they had to remember was not to do that.’

There’s more unexpected comedy with Richard the Lionheart – although again it’s a little dark.

In 1199 Richard was besieging a small castle in Aquitaine when he noticed a doughty defender up on the walls protecting himself from incoming arrows with a frying pan.

The King paused for a moment to admire this devil-may-care fellow, only for the defender to put down his frying pan, pick up a crossbow and shoot the King in the shoulder.

Richard rode off to get treatment for the wound, but died of infection less than a fortnight later.

And I like Mitchell’s provocative comparisons with the present, as when he argues that going on a Crusade in the Middle Ages ‘was simply the fashionable and righteous thing to be doing at the time – like going vegan is now’.

The mood is more sombre with the death of the Black Prince, hero of chivalry, eldest son of Edward III, who might have lived to be one of medieval England’s greatest kings had he not died of dysentery in 1376 – and left behind one of the most plain-spoken and moving of royal epitaphs, to be seen to this day in Canterbury Cathedral:

Such as thou art, sometime was I.

Such as I am, such shalt thou be.

I thought little on th’our of Death

So long as I enjoyed breath …

But now a wretched captive am I,

Deep in the ground, lo here I lie, My beauty great, is all quite gone,

My flesh is wasted to the bone.

On the whole, though, the tone is energetically comical, though a history buff might find it a bit much at times. At one point Mitchell discusses Edward II’s ‘favourite’ – and possible lover – Piers Gaveston, then jokes about how his name sounds like the indigestion remedy Gaviscon – and continues in this vein for a whole page. Hmm. Some editing needed here, perhaps?

At another moment, in his conclusion, Mitchell says that despite our perennial fascination with kings and queens, he doesn’t himself rate them that highly: in fact he reckons Angela Merkel is a greater historical figure than either Elizabeth I or Henry V.

Mrs Merkel? Really? I’d say this view is somewhat... unorthodox.

Still, if you want your history opinionated and chatty, with plenty of jokes and a cracking pace, then Unruly is a romp of a read.