Speaker 1: Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
Speaker 1: and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised. I'm so
Speaker 1: thrilled to be talking to the brilliant David Mitchell, who's
Speaker 1: an incredible comedian, actor, writer, television show creator, icon of
Speaker 1: British panel shows, an author of several books. But his
Speaker 1: latest book, Unruly, The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens,
Speaker 1: is now out in paperback. If you're a listener of
Speaker 1: this podcast, you will absolutely love this book. It's such
Speaker 1: a phenomenal analysis not only of the early kings and
Speaker 1: queens of England, starting from before William the First, which
Speaker 1: I thought was a brilliant decision, but an analysis really
Speaker 1: of what our historical understanding of those kings says about
Speaker 1: British culture and human culture as a whole. David, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for joining me.
Speaker 2: No, not at all, thank you for having me. Thank
Speaker 2: you for that lovely introduction.
Speaker 1: Just to start. What inspired you to write a book
Speaker 1: about the British monarchy?
Speaker 2: Well, it was definitely partly the global pandemic in that
Speaker 2: I was sitting around doing nothing and I sort of
Speaker 2: went through a long period of frustration at all of
Speaker 2: the books and screenplays that everyone else seemed to be
Speaker 2: using their time to write while I sat there and
Speaker 2: miserably refreshed the BBC news page and the hope of
Speaker 2: some sign of an end to it all. And then finally,
Speaker 2: when there was some sign of an end to it all,
Speaker 2: I found something to do, which was to initially sit
Speaker 2: down and start typing about how the arrival of COVID
Speaker 2: felt a bit like the arrival of the Vikings must
Speaker 2: have felt to the Anglo Saxons, as in, it was
Speaker 2: just something that came out of the blue and was
Speaker 2: a real pain for everyone. Was you know, literal and
Speaker 2: metaphorical pain ensued. So I literally started typing that chapter.
Speaker 2: I think because of that, you know, the weirdness of
Speaker 2: cod and the suddenness, do you do think more about
Speaker 2: history because you think, oh my god, this is a
Speaker 2: bit of it that's happening. It's just happening suddenly to me,
Speaker 2: and it's not out of a trend. Really. I mean,
Speaker 2: obviously people relentlessly talk about how it was out of
Speaker 2: a trend and we should have seen it coming and
Speaker 2: why wasn't there more ppe in all the covers et cetera,
Speaker 2: et cetera. But they weren't saying it beforehand, or if
Speaker 2: they were, no one was listening, So I sort of
Speaker 2: I think broadly speaking, no one saw it coming. I mean,
Speaker 2: the Anglo Saxons thought that they should have seen the
Speaker 2: vikings coming by, you know, and it was all because
Speaker 2: they hadn't prayed enough. And there's really no evidence of
Speaker 2: a connection between their lack of praying and the arrival
Speaker 2: of Norse warriors. But you know, you start thinking about
Speaker 2: your powerlessness in the universe, and that's how a lot
Speaker 2: of people in the Middle Ages felt all the time,
Speaker 2: because they really didn't know what the hell was going on.
Speaker 2: So it was a natural thing to start typing about.
Speaker 2: And then it was great that I just had that
Speaker 2: freedom for a few months, just to play around with
Speaker 2: it and find a tone voice that I hope is
Speaker 2: funny for talking about the past in a not in
Speaker 2: a detailed way, but in a way that gives an
Speaker 2: overview for people who wish they had more of an
Speaker 2: overview of in the case of my book, The Kings
Speaker 2: and Queens of England. So yes, by the time we
Speaker 2: were allowed to go out and get a cafes again,
Speaker 2: I'd written a third of it, and that I was
Speaker 2: bound to finish it or that third would have been wasted.
Speaker 2: I tend to write another book, but I'm not quite
Speaker 2: sure how I'll do it without a pandemic.
Speaker 1: Well I was going to say, well, we would all
Speaker 1: hope for that, but let's just say if there was
Speaker 1: another pandemic, that would be the slight silver lining.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you.
Speaker 1: Where did you begin in your historical research? Obviously there
Speaker 1: you cover a wide swath of history. What was sort
Speaker 1: of your process like of finding sources or reading?
Speaker 2: Genuinely? I started writing about what I knew about already
Speaker 2: and to try and find a funny way through it.
Speaker 2: And then when i'd sort of realized, actually I've got
Speaker 2: to a point I don't know what happened now, then
Speaker 2: I've just read around it and I can't pretend to
Speaker 2: have gone back to primary sources in any way. But
Speaker 2: I just read some books about it and got my
Speaker 2: sense of what was vaguely going on, and tried to
Speaker 2: re express it in a way that's comic and informative.
Speaker 2: And I see myself as a comedian, not a historian.
Speaker 2: And I thought, the first thing the book needs to
Speaker 2: be if at all possible is amusing, and if it
Speaker 2: can be amusing through things that are true and in
Speaker 2: my view sort of historically matter, then that would be
Speaker 2: hopefully a rewarding read rather than taking you know, obviously,
Speaker 2: you can find funny things in history in terms of
Speaker 2: broadly the disgustingness of life, then the lack of plumbing,
Speaker 2: the weird superstitions.
Speaker 1: You can do that, the existence of King Henry the Eighth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Or you can try and do what I
Speaker 2: hope I've done, at least partly, is take the thing
Speaker 2: that were important and see the funny side of that.
Speaker 2: And that doesn't mean, because I'm a big believer that
Speaker 2: anything that matters is looked at in a certain way funny,
Speaker 2: and if it doesn't matter, it's never that funny. The
Speaker 2: best comedies have always been about things that really matter,
Speaker 2: you know. The heart of the Simpsons is a story
Speaker 2: of disappointment and a failed dream and the sort of
Speaker 2: I mean, there's a great line in it I think that,
Speaker 2: you know, be the cause of an answer to all
Speaker 2: of life's problem and in that you sort of there's
Speaker 2: a sort of deep truth about human disappointment that makes
Speaker 2: that show much funnier. Than if it was just you know,
Speaker 2: funny about silly things.
Speaker 1: They should put that on the Emmy campaigns. I haven't
Speaker 1: seen that on the billboards.
Speaker 2: Well, I think the greatest truth comes through comedy, I think,
Speaker 2: and I you know someone who's tried to say funny
Speaker 2: things about the news that various in my career. I thought, well,
Speaker 2: I'll try that about what was the news? Which is history.
Speaker 1: One thing that I love about this book that I
Speaker 1: mentioned briefly in the introduction is that you choose to
Speaker 1: start earlier than William the First, than William the Conqueror,
Speaker 1: where the counting sort of begins, But there's so much
Speaker 1: British English history that happens before then. And particularly I
Speaker 1: loved your analysis of King Arthur. Can you talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about how the myth of King Arthur sort
Speaker 1: of is understood in modern day Britain.
Speaker 2: Well, King Arthur is probably the most famous king in
Speaker 2: some ways. It's probably more programs made about Henry the
Speaker 2: Eighth these days, but he is an incredibly famous figure,
Speaker 2: the original good King who reigned at some point after
Speaker 2: the Romans had left and before the Anglo Saxons arrived,
Speaker 2: and a wonderful, very very pure and Christian Kingdom. And
Speaker 2: this is a lovely idea lent on an in Jul
Speaker 2: for centuries by other kings, by people who were sad
Speaker 2: that their king wasn't better and they thought, if only
Speaker 2: he could have been more like good old King Arthur was.
Speaker 2: And you know, it has been dramatized for television and
Speaker 2: in films, and it's a really lovely idea. The only
Speaker 2: problem is there is absolutely zero evidence that he existed
Speaker 2: at all, and you know, he just didn't. It's just
Speaker 2: not possible. I mean, he looks like a medieval king
Speaker 2: in all the pictures, and that's because the key time
Speaker 2: of imagining and enjoying imagining him was the Middle Ages,
Speaker 2: and they didn't really think about whether people wore the
Speaker 2: same clothes hundreds of years earlier as they did. So
Speaker 2: that's a bit of a clue. Why would there be
Speaker 2: this sudden basically totally medieval king, a bit like Edward
Speaker 2: the First or Edward the Third cropping up soon after
Speaker 2: the last toga just rotted and before the first boat
Speaker 2: comes over from Denmark. It just doesn't add up. And
Speaker 2: the monks of Glastonbury Abbey, who were you know, nothing
Speaker 2: if not entrepreneurial created a grave for King Arthur and
Speaker 2: his queen, and everyone thought, well, he must have existed,
Speaker 2: he's got a grave, but no, it's you know, you
Speaker 2: could say the same about Mickey Mouse and his castle.
Speaker 2: So yes, King Arthur is a lovely idea, but he
Speaker 2: didn't exist, but very very important if you're writing a
Speaker 2: book about kings because that's the template. That's what everyone
Speaker 2: was saying a king should be. And they didn't. And
Speaker 2: they weren't great many periods of the past, and we're
Speaker 2: not necessarily that great at it now. Even they weren't
Speaker 2: great at hoping for a better future. What they could do, though,
Speaker 2: is hark back to a better past. But they didn't
Speaker 2: necessarily really know what the past was like, so they
Speaker 2: sort of invented a utopian past in King Arthur, or
Speaker 2: certainly utopian when it comes to kingship, and decided that's
Speaker 2: what they would hark back to.
Speaker 1: I found that idea in your book very striking, with
Speaker 1: a lot of modern parallels of how motivating it is
Speaker 1: for people to harken back to an imaginary past, whether
Speaker 1: or not that past actually existed.
Speaker 2: Well exactly, and our views are memories of the past
Speaker 2: that you know, with the issue of making America great
Speaker 2: again is hanging over this conversation. So I'm just going
Speaker 2: to say that is an attempt to harp back to
Speaker 2: something in people's minds, and whether or not that thing
Speaker 2: ever existed is well certainly unproved either way. It was
Speaker 2: a different world in all of the West in the
Speaker 2: nineteen fifties and sixties, and in many ways it was
Speaker 2: a worse world, but in some ways it was a
Speaker 2: better world. Obviously, there are people who want to cherry
Speaker 2: pick elements of the past and say, let's get back
Speaker 2: to that it was. It was better. One of the
Speaker 2: things that was better for us all, of course, is
Speaker 2: that we were younger, so you know, our backs hurt
Speaker 2: a bit less, you know, our these were less troublesome,
Speaker 2: Our death was further away, and you can't actually get
Speaker 2: back to that.
Speaker 1: Our parents weren't telling us about all the bad things
Speaker 1: happening on the news, and movies were better because we,
Speaker 1: of course weren't watching them with the critical eye.
Speaker 2: Yes, quite so, you know, you can't help Nostalgia is
Speaker 2: a powerful force. And even that, you know, it's possible
Speaker 2: to feel nostalgia even for great misery. In one's own past,
Speaker 2: and that's just because it's gone now and will never
Speaker 2: be recaptured, so it has a kind of rose tinted aura.
Speaker 1: One idea that I love in this book is the
Speaker 1: notion that the for lack of a better phrase, da
Speaker 1: Vinci codification of trying to find the real King Arthur
Speaker 1: is ultimately a meaningless exercise, because even if you found
Speaker 1: a man who happened to be called Arthur, he wouldn't
Speaker 1: be the king that he became in popular legend.
Speaker 2: Well know exactly. And people are so desperate for King
Speaker 2: Arthur to have existed, you know, understandably it would be
Speaker 2: really cool that they seem willing to drop almost every
Speaker 2: meaningful attribute I'd say, including his name. Maybe he was
Speaker 2: based on some major chieftain who ruled the Britons, you know,
Speaker 2: soon after the Legions left and the and the Anglo
Speaker 2: Saxons arrived and he said, well, yes, okay. And obviously
Speaker 2: there were powerful figures then because people lived, and so
Speaker 2: there will have been people bossing them around. That's the
Speaker 2: way of the world. But in what meaningful way are
Speaker 2: any of them King Arthur? And yes, I suppose King
Speaker 2: Arthur is based on them, because that's the time in
Speaker 2: history that he's supposedly sort of cited. But unless any
Speaker 2: of these people were in any way, you know, good,
Speaker 2: in the in the same ways as King Arthur, then
Speaker 2: the basing him on them is not very meaningful.
Speaker 1: Who in your research of this book, which goes from
Speaker 1: the imaginer King Arthur up until Elizabeth, I would you
Speaker 1: say is the most underrated king that you came across.
Speaker 2: I've got a soft spot for Henry the first, and
Speaker 2: he's certainly not very highly rated at the time. I
Speaker 2: don't suppose he felt underrated. He was, you know, everybody
Speaker 2: said he was a very successful king, but I think
Speaker 2: he's largely forgotten now. And the reason he interests me
Speaker 2: is that he feels very professional, and you sort of
Speaker 2: feel that the government under him was he had an interest,
Speaker 2: not necessarily in the priorities that modern government have, but
Speaker 2: he wanted order. He wanted expansion of his own realm,
Speaker 2: but sort of to a limited extent. He wasn't going
Speaker 2: mad for that. He wanted an orderly succession to the
Speaker 2: next generation. He very much didn't get that, but he
Speaker 2: really worked at it. So you sort of think that
Speaker 2: that's not that nightmarish for the people at the time.
Speaker 2: If you've got a king like that, then that is
Speaker 2: reasonably competent government. And that may sound like faint praise,
Speaker 2: but in the context of the Middle Ages, it isn't
Speaker 2: faint praise. It's high praise, because the standard of government
Speaker 2: was dreadful. So I think Henry, I think if all
Speaker 2: the kings had been like Henry the first, then being
Speaker 2: a medieval peasant would have been forty percent more pleasant
Speaker 2: than it actually turned out to be. So yeah, I'll
Speaker 2: put in a word for him.
Speaker 1: I do love the emphasis over the book of predictability
Speaker 1: and the value of stability and understanding what's coming next,
Speaker 1: and whether that is knowing which son is going to
Speaker 1: become king next, or knowing that you're not going to
Speaker 1: go to war and lose all your holdings. In Normandy,
Speaker 1: predictability feels like a sort of undersung factor in what
Speaker 1: makes a good king. It's not usually as glamorous in
Speaker 1: a conversation when compared to war or conquering or crusades.
Speaker 2: Basically, they knew at the time, as far as I
Speaker 2: can tell, that there was no amount of good stuff
Speaker 2: that any individual ruler could do that was as bad
Speaker 2: as what could go wrong if there was a disputed succession,
Speaker 2: and they were very much happened. The whole principle of
Speaker 2: kingship is saying, never mind how good the ruler is,
Speaker 2: let's just know who it is. Because when we don't
Speaker 2: know who it is, that civil war and the very
Speaker 2: basic stuff that we expect from our government, stopping us
Speaker 2: being invaded, maybe a bit of help if the crops fail,
Speaker 2: you know, low level law and order that will collapse
Speaker 2: if we don't know who the king is, and even
Speaker 2: quite bad kings might keep those basic services limping along.
Speaker 2: So by saying, and in the early part of the book,
Speaker 2: the Anglo Saxons, they didn't have the principle of primogeniture,
Speaker 2: so it wasn't necessarily the eldest son who was supposed
Speaker 2: to succeed. So quite often when an Anglo Saxon king died,
Speaker 2: there was a mini civil war while his sons fought
Speaker 2: it out for the who is going to run the kingdom?
Speaker 2: And that's actually a marginally more meritocratic system you get
Speaker 2: the more effective warrior king tends to be the one
Speaker 2: that prevails. But that element of meritocracy was demonstrably not
Speaker 2: worth it for the amount of fighting and killing that
Speaker 2: that system involved. You know, now, in a functioning democracy
Speaker 2: you get fingers crossed an orderly succession when one government
Speaker 2: replaces the other. And that's a really important part of
Speaker 2: what makes a democracy work, because if you don't have that,
Speaker 2: you're better off just not changing the government ever, sticking
Speaker 2: with who you've got, and then saying as clearly as
Speaker 2: possible in advance, and when he dies, it'll be his son,
Speaker 2: and please may it just continue on this even keel
Speaker 2: for as long as possible. Because the worst things that
Speaker 2: happened in the Middle Ages weren't the things the king did.
Speaker 2: It was the times no one knew who the king
Speaker 2: was or couldn't agree on that. And that's happened a
Speaker 2: lot in the Anglo saxon Araa with no primar geniture established.
Speaker 2: It happened when Henry the first died and he wanted
Speaker 2: his daughter to succeed him. That did not go down
Speaker 2: well at the time, a non house of the dragon, right, yeah, yes,
Speaker 2: And you know that was so there was there was
Speaker 2: absolute you know, hellish it's known unfashionably now, but it's
Speaker 2: known as the anarchy traditionally that period. And that's a
Speaker 2: hint that it wasn't nice the Wars of the Roses
Speaker 2: a few hundred years later. That's a long period of
Speaker 2: lack of clarity as to who the king was. That
Speaker 2: was the lesson of the age. But every so often
Speaker 2: they broke their own rules. So Richard the Second absolutely
Speaker 2: terrible king, but undoubtedly the rightful king. Nobody ever really
Speaker 2: disputed his right to rule, however awful his conduct was.
Speaker 2: But in the end he was so bad they couldn't
Speaker 2: stand it, and the barons got rid of him, and
Speaker 2: he basically killed him or allowed him to die and
Speaker 2: put another guy on the throne who was in every
Speaker 2: way more competent, and they all liked him, and you know,
Speaker 2: he'll be much better, but they all felt they'd done wrong.
Speaker 2: The next king was Henry the Fourth. He had a
Speaker 2: sort of very unst stable, unhappy reign, but basically thereon
Speaker 2: that the office of king was never properly strong again,
Speaker 2: and there was a lot more fighting over who would
Speaker 2: be in charge after that, and so fundamentally it wasn't
Speaker 2: worth it. They should have stuck with Richard the scond
Speaker 2: until he died, and that you know, there would have
Speaker 2: been less horribleness if they had. But at the time,
Speaker 2: they thought, well, he just can't carry on to me
Speaker 2: because it's a long time ago, and all of the
Speaker 2: pain caused just as long you know, has receded well
Speaker 2: into the background. I find it funny. I find that quandary.
Speaker 2: They're relentlessly in that, the aristocrats of sort of stability
Speaker 2: versus competence. I find that amusing, amusing to see them
Speaker 2: struggle with it. Amusing how they've invented collectively this thing
Speaker 2: kingship that they claim God is into So they give
Speaker 2: the rule of the sort of endorsement of the Almighty.
Speaker 2: That was a clever idea to have cooked up. But
Speaker 2: then the problem is, what if you have an absolute idiot,
Speaker 2: you know, slash murderous maniac who you're now saying is
Speaker 2: endorsed by God. What do you do about that? And
Speaker 2: should you just do nothing, you know, hope it gets better,
Speaker 2: wait till he dies? Should you try and get rid
Speaker 2: of him? But then what are you saying? What's the system?
Speaker 1: Then?
Speaker 2: I think the other thing that we forget is that
Speaker 2: they really bought into this. It might have been invented
Speaker 2: in the Middle Ages, the notion of kingship, but they
Speaker 2: didn't feel that they'd invented it. They thought it was
Speaker 2: something fundamental and natural and genuinely ordained by God. So
Speaker 2: as soon as they undermine it, they feel have we
Speaker 2: committed a terrible sin? And if they don't feel like that,
Speaker 2: they're just sort of rudderless in the universe, saying, well,
Speaker 2: who's supposed to look after us? Who's supposed to say
Speaker 2: what's what? And we're quite used to the notion of atheism.
Speaker 2: Now there are a lot of atheists, and there's no
Speaker 2: one who hasn't heard of the idea. So we've all
Speaker 2: contemplated that feeling that what if there is no order
Speaker 2: to the universe, there is no big beardy guy in
Speaker 2: charge making sure we'll all be okay. And so even
Speaker 2: if we do decide we're religious, and it's a sort
Speaker 2: of choice, in those days, it wasn't a choice. They
Speaker 2: were that they were told it was true in the
Speaker 2: same way we're told how to wire a plug, and
Speaker 2: that must have been very, very comforting. And the idea
Speaker 2: of kingship was fundamentally linked to that. So as soon
Speaker 2: as the king is bad, as soon as they get
Speaker 2: rid of a king, then their whole notion of the
Speaker 2: universe is shaken. As if they suddenly discover that the
Speaker 2: you know, the solar system isn't as we believe it
Speaker 2: to be.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's that idea where if the king isn't
Speaker 1: chosen by God, then it's just a man in a
Speaker 1: gold hat, and we've we've created all of these institutions
Speaker 1: around him that are artificial and ultimately meaningless. You know,
Speaker 1: hundreds of people bringing him his breakfast and organizing his
Speaker 1: jousts and every that goes into kingship. What is it
Speaker 1: all for if it's not God anointing this person as
Speaker 1: the leader of all of us.
Speaker 2: Exactly a tremendous comfort come from it, and the sort
Speaker 2: of duty to this figure, and sort of trying to say, well,
Speaker 2: you know, the Lord moves in mysterious ways, so the
Speaker 2: king may seem like a maniac, but maybe this is
Speaker 2: all going to come good in the end. And throughout
Speaker 2: my book you see people try and shore up that idea,
Speaker 2: and you see them confront it, and it doesn't really
Speaker 2: come to any final conclusion. But at the end there's
Speaker 2: still a sovereign on the throne claiming that they rule
Speaker 2: by divine sanction. I think the idea is less brought
Speaker 2: into by the nobleman then than it had been a
Speaker 2: few hundred years earlier. But they're still going with it.
Speaker 2: But there is also something called a parliament sort of
Speaker 2: slightly reigning in the monarchs, and that obviously is a
Speaker 2: prelude to the next chapter of English and British history
Speaker 2: when the parliament and the king end up fighting a war.
Speaker 2: But you could sort of see that that was inevitable
Speaker 2: because they were fundamentally always going to come to blows.
Speaker 1: If Henry the First is sort of the unsung king
Speaker 1: or an underrated king in British history, who would you
Speaker 1: say is the most overrated king?
Speaker 2: Henry the Fifth, I think is probably the most overrated.
Speaker 1: He had that one buzzy battle.
Speaker 2: Though amazing battle Agincourps, definitely won against the odds, and he,
Speaker 2: by the end of his reign was you know, the
Speaker 2: heir to the French throne as well as King of England,
Speaker 2: and so you know, on his own terms he was
Speaker 2: spectacularly successful. That's where I sort of play my comedian's
Speaker 2: card and say I'm allowed to take a step back
Speaker 2: from medieval kingship and say that the hundreds of years
Speaker 2: of English kings desperately trying also to be kings of France.
Speaker 2: Was an enormous waste of energy, money, lives, and effort,
Speaker 2: and it was pointless. It was the wrong policy. The
Speaker 2: King of England will never be the King of France
Speaker 2: as well. The King of France will never be the
Speaker 2: King of England as well. It was just unworkable. But
Speaker 2: yet English kings for hundreds of years, their main focus
Speaker 2: was raising money to raise troops to go over to
Speaker 2: fight battles in France, with horrendous consequences for the people
Speaker 2: trying to just live in France, and in the end
Speaker 2: they usually failed. There are a few examples of that.
Speaker 2: You know. English history has sort of always cherished of
Speaker 2: these against the odds victories, with the brave English archers
Speaker 2: defeating larger numbers of French knights. But you take a
Speaker 2: step back and what was the point in all of that.
Speaker 2: The King of England never became King of France, and
Speaker 2: it wouldn't have been good if they had. It was
Speaker 2: just a waste of time and blood and energy. And
Speaker 2: it's one of the things I like about Henry the
Speaker 2: first is that he didn't really try any of that.
Speaker 2: He was the Duke of Normandy. He wanted control of Normandy.
Speaker 2: He'd like control of some other bits around Normandy if possible.
Speaker 2: But he didn't have any ridiculous ideas about also being
Speaker 2: king of France like Henry the fifth and Edward the
Speaker 2: Third did, or being say, like Henry the eighth did,
Speaker 2: being some sort of emperor or whatever. He knew his place.
Speaker 2: He had reasonable ambitions for a king of his scale,
Speaker 2: and that caused a lot less suffering. Henry the fifth
Speaker 2: was a maniac fueled by sort of religious fervor. Very
Speaker 2: successful militarily, but what is the point in all of
Speaker 2: that energy and all of that killing of poor French
Speaker 2: noblemen while they were wrapped up in armor.
Speaker 1: That's a fantastic reed. I also, I think one of
Speaker 1: the most controversial kings, and controversial in the sense that
Speaker 1: people have very very strong opinions on both sides of
Speaker 1: the issue, is Richard, because there are people who have
Speaker 1: very strong feelings are what are your feelings on Richard
Speaker 1: the Third?
Speaker 2: Well, my feeling I take the conventional line on Richard
Speaker 2: the Third, which is that he is overwhelmingly the most
Speaker 2: likely person to have caused the deaths of his nephews,
Speaker 2: the princes in the Tower. That's the key point of
Speaker 2: controversy over Richard the third. He definitely took the throne,
Speaker 2: you know, usurped the throne from his nephew, who was
Speaker 2: referred to as end of the fifth, although he wasn't
Speaker 2: really meaningfully ever a king, but he definitely usurped the throne.
Speaker 2: But obviously plenty of people in that, including Henry the First.
Speaker 2: That doesn't necessarily make you villainous in the context of
Speaker 2: English kingship, but it's also he has always been accused
Speaker 2: of murdering his nephew edd Of the fifth and his
Speaker 2: brother when they were boys in the Tower of London,
Speaker 2: and you know, either murdering them himself or more likely
Speaker 2: having them murdered. I think he probably did that, and
Speaker 2: that is the conventional historical line. But Richard the Third
Speaker 2: has a lot of fans who think he was, you know,
Speaker 2: unfairly maligned, largely as a delt of Tudor propaganda, because
Speaker 2: after Richard the Third fell there was a regime change
Speaker 2: that Tudor did this. He came in and they had
Speaker 2: to justify them their having taken the throne, and which
Speaker 2: they needed. It needed a lot of justification because they
Speaker 2: definitely weren't heirs to the throne by any of the
Speaker 2: conventions of inheritance, so they needed to cook up a story,
Speaker 2: and the key part of their story was, well, the
Speaker 2: king before was awful, he killed his nephews, he was
Speaker 2: a tyrant, and so you know, obviously you have to
Speaker 2: be suspicious of the things they say about Richard the third.
Speaker 2: But I don't know what else happened to those princes
Speaker 2: because nobody, as far as we know, nobody saw them
Speaker 2: for at least two years before Henry the seventh was
Speaker 2: on the scene. So I don't see that it's plausible
Speaker 2: that they were killed by the Tudors. I think it
Speaker 2: was very likely to have been Richard the third, but
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that's definite. What amuses me is how
Speaker 2: much emotional investment people have in saying, no, Richard there
Speaker 2: was lovely, he was great king, and well, we can't know,
Speaker 2: we can't know for sure. We know the balance of probability.
Speaker 2: We know it's more likely he killed the princes in
Speaker 2: the tower than anyone else, and we sort of just
Speaker 2: have to be satisfied with that. And you can enjoy
Speaker 2: and imagined Richard IID, who is unfairly slantered by the
Speaker 2: tudors if you want to, but you can't tell yourself
Speaker 2: that was definitely the case, just because you find it
Speaker 2: an attractive idea.
Speaker 1: It kind of goes back to what you were saying
Speaker 1: about history being the story that we tell ourselves in
Speaker 1: that it's very fun to imagine that it's a detective
Speaker 1: story that we can solve and not an incredibly messy
Speaker 1: series of complicated people and complicated events that will be
Speaker 1: forever Unknoble.
Speaker 2: Well exactly that all we have is the evidence that's
Speaker 2: come down to us and things have been written about it,
Speaker 2: and you know, we're not going to suddenly discover video
Speaker 2: footage of Henry the Seventh killing the young Prince of
Speaker 2: the Fifth. It's just not going to happen. There's always
Speaker 2: going to be a question mark over it. So I thought,
Speaker 2: in my overview, i'll, you know, I'll say what I
Speaker 2: think probably happened, and the reason I think it probably
Speaker 2: went that way, that's what most people think, and that's
Speaker 2: that's the direction most of the evidence points in. But
Speaker 2: I fully accept we can't totally know.
Speaker 1: I don't want to keep you too long, but just
Speaker 1: as we wrap up the conversation, what I love about
Speaker 1: this book is Not only is it an overview of
Speaker 1: the monarchs as they came, but also it fundamentally deepened,
Speaker 1: especially as an American, my understanding of how British people
Speaker 1: see themselves through the monarchy. Is there something you learned
Speaker 1: about British identity or discovered over the course of writing
Speaker 1: this book that surprised you.
Speaker 2: Well, I think the more I thought about it, the
Speaker 2: more I was very careful to say, this is a
Speaker 2: book about the English kings, so it's not about the
Speaker 2: Scottish king. Yes, I apologize, No, no, not at all,
Speaker 2: but I'm sort of more explained. Why I was so
Speaker 2: clear on that partly because I, you know, I Scottish
Speaker 2: history up to sixty you know three is of you know,
Speaker 2: linked but separate thing. Ditto Irish history, and I wasn't
Speaker 2: going to pretend I'd covered them because I hadn't. So
Speaker 2: I'm coming clean. This is just England. Obviously, after the
Speaker 2: period of my book onwards, the monarchy, the same monarchy
Speaker 2: is effectively shared by more parts of the British Isles,
Speaker 2: so it become the story is more unified into a
Speaker 2: story of British history, the divisions within it. Notwithstanding what
Speaker 2: it struck me is that within the United Kingdom and
Speaker 2: the British Isles, the nations that aren't England, Scotland, Wales
Speaker 2: and Ireland have very very strong senses of cultural identity,
Speaker 2: and England doesn't. I don't think so. I think England's
Speaker 2: various sections of England have strong senses of identity Cornwall
Speaker 2: and Yorkshire, and London and Kent, and you know, the
Speaker 2: North of England versus the South of England. These are
Speaker 2: strong senses, but England as a whole doesn't have a
Speaker 2: strong sense of itself as separate from Britain in the
Speaker 2: way Scotland and Wales do.
Speaker 1: To an American, I would say that the English identity
Speaker 1: and correct me if I'm wrong, seems to be exclusively
Speaker 1: bunting and baking in a tent and having a man
Speaker 1: to poke at your bread and tell you if it's
Speaker 1: overproofd or not.
Speaker 2: Well, that certainly is a big part of identity, of
Speaker 2: our identity, but that program, confusingly is not called the
Speaker 2: Great English Bacoff. So we have this issue Englishness and
Speaker 2: Britishness where they're distinct. For Scott's, even the ones that
Speaker 2: don't want Scotland to become an independent country even Scotts
Speaker 2: in favor of the union, still have a strong sense
Speaker 2: of what is different about Scotland from England, What Scotland's
Speaker 2: unique identity within Britain is England I don't think has
Speaker 2: that sense. So England very much turns backward on its
Speaker 2: own history, and at the center of its history is
Speaker 2: it's monarchy. So I think, I say early in the book,
Speaker 2: the monarchy is what England has instead of a sense
Speaker 2: of identity, and that his simplification. And actually there are
Speaker 2: many senses of identity in England, but no real unifying one.
Speaker 2: But the monarchy then becomes a sort of symbol of
Speaker 2: a unifying one, even for those that are against the monarchy.
Speaker 2: If you see what I mean. There it is at
Speaker 2: the center of us. Whether you like it or not,
Speaker 2: it's there. It's why England is so obsessed with its
Speaker 2: own heritage, obsessed with looking back, with nostalgia, sort of
Speaker 2: returning to the point about nostalgia being something that people
Speaker 2: can invest in more will wholeheartedly than a belief in
Speaker 2: a better future. And the Great British Bakeoff is obviously
Speaker 2: part of that, is that its entire esthetic is a
Speaker 2: sort of idealized nineteen fifties village England. But England has
Speaker 2: been largely metropolitan since the early part of the nineteenth century,
Speaker 2: and yet the typical England archetypal England is about villages. Well,
Speaker 2: most people live in big cities in England. We were
Speaker 2: the first industrialized nation, and yet we associate ourselves with
Speaker 2: rural areas well. That's there's something fundamentally absurd about that.
Speaker 2: We should be the most sort of urban focused of
Speaker 2: all the cultures. But no, we think of ourselves as rural,
Speaker 2: even though we're patently not. And the monarchy being at
Speaker 2: the center of that is part of it. And we
Speaker 2: feel safe focusing on our monarchy because these days it's
Speaker 2: harmless and powerless, but nevertheless it's sort of all we've
Speaker 2: got is our sort of badge of belonging.
Speaker 1: And forgive me because this book does stop at Queen
Speaker 1: Elizabeth the First, but I'm curious on your read on
Speaker 1: the modern day monarchy. Do you think that that fundamental
Speaker 1: nostalgia and fondness for a sort of national story is
Speaker 1: enough to keep the monarchy going in the present day.
Speaker 2: I don't know, but I've certainly I have no problem
Speaker 2: with the constitutional monarchy at all, and I think there's
Speaker 2: something quite useful about having the figurehead of the country,
Speaker 2: the most important person in the country, not actually being
Speaker 2: the person with the power. I think putting the power
Speaker 2: and the sort of dignity of nationhood in the same
Speaker 2: person can be problematic. I say that at risk of,
Speaker 2: you know, of straying into topicality again, but I genuinely
Speaker 2: think it's useful that the person with the most power
Speaker 2: in Britain is the Prime Minister, but they have someone
Speaker 2: else who's nominally their boss. And obviously, if we got
Speaker 2: rid of the monarchy, we would have to have a
Speaker 2: new constitution. We'd have to decide whether to have an
Speaker 2: executive presidency like in the United States and France, or
Speaker 2: whether you have a president you elect but has little
Speaker 2: more power than a monarch. And you know, I don't
Speaker 2: know how well we cope with that, because if you've
Speaker 2: won an election, you should have power, shouldn't you. Or
Speaker 2: you know that we'd have to face up to all
Speaker 2: of that. And my fear is that we're going through
Speaker 2: a tricky time ourselves here with faith in politicians and
Speaker 2: politics is a sort of all time low, and this
Speaker 2: isn't really the best time to frame a new constitution.
Speaker 1: It would leave you so vulnerable to the vikings.
Speaker 2: Excellent point, yes, and then we'd only have ourselves to blame.
Speaker 1: Well, unruly. The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens
Speaker 1: is out in paperback in the UK and across the Pond.
Speaker 1: You should absolutely pick it up. It is a delightful
Speaker 1: and such a smart read. David Mitchell, I can't thank
Speaker 1: you again enough for this conversation.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 2: I've really enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: Noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and
Speaker 1: Mild from Aaron Mankey. Noble Blood is hosted by me Dana,
Speaker 1: with additional writing and research by Hannah Johnston, Hannahswick, Courtney Sender,
Speaker 1: Amy Hit and Julia Milani. The show is edited and
Speaker 1: produced by Jesse Funk, with supervising producerrima Ill Kali and
Speaker 1: executive producers Aaron Manke, Trevor Young and Matt Frederick. For
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