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1066 and All That
172 pages
A delightfully absurd romp through the hazy, half-remembered fever dream of grade-school history lessons.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like sitting in the back of a classroom with a witty friend who is confidently failing a history exam. The pace is brisk and relentlessly silly, turning centuries of complex events into a series of memorable, if entirely inaccurate, punchlines. Its deadpan prose is filled with capitalized 'Good Things' and 'Bad Kings,' perfectly capturing the hazy, half-remembered fever dream of grade-school education. The mood is jovial and deeply nostalgic, wrapping the reader in a lighthearted atmosphere of shared confusion. It is a masterclass in British absurdity that delights Anglophiles, history buffs, and anyone who appreciates the hilarious unreliability of human memory and the utter ridiculousness of national myth-making.
- Mood
- jovial
- lighthearted
- silly
- nostalgic
- Tone
- satirical
- irreverent
- tongue-in-cheek
- absurd
- witty
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- unreliability of memory · absurdity of national myth-making · schoolboy nostalgia · historical reductionism
- The writing
- Deadpan and deliberately mangled, filled with capitalized 'Important Concepts' and hilariously confident inaccuracies.
- The arc
- A continuous romp of amused recognition that culminates in a cheerful dismissal of historical grandiosity.
- Who it's for
- History buffs with a sense of humor and anyone who remembers the hazy confusion of grade-school history lessons.
About the book
A tongue-in-cheek history of England which takes as its basic tenet the idea that history is only what you can remember and is therefore a collection of half remembered facts. The authors maintain that there are only two memorable dates, these being 1066 (the Battle of Hastings and the Norman Invasion) and 55 BC (the first Roman Invasion). The book begins with the Roman invasion and continues to the end of WW1, when America ‘was clearly thus Top Nation, and history came to a.
Description from Open Library.
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