Overview

A seriously FUNNY, seriously CLEVER history of our early kings and queens by one of our favourite comedians and cultural commentators. This will be the most refreshing, entertaining history of England you'll have ever read. Certainly, the funniest. Because David Mitchell will explain how it is not all names, dates or ungraspable historical headwinds, but instead show how it's really just a bunch of random stuff that happened with a few lucky bastards ending up on top. Some of these bastards were quite strange, but they were in charge, so we quite literally lived, and often still live, by their rules. It's a great story. And it's our story. If you want to know who we are in modern Britain, you need to read this book.

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9781405953191

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Reviews

Unruly is part Horrible Histories part jolly romp guided by Alan Bennett. Perhaps this is how history should be done: not by patient scholars, but by free-swearing actor-comedians cramming more ideas and jokes into their pages than many professionals have committed to print in their careers. * Guardian * Full of jokes and canny insights, 100 per cent sparkier and more revernt than your school textbooks * I * An enjoyable, rollicking read, definitely not a conventional history book * Sunday Times * I don’t think anyone other than David Mitchell could have written this book. It’s clever, funny and makes you think quite differently about history we thought we knew * DAN SNOW, HISTORIAN AND BROADCASTER * By turns fascinating and funny - there is a jewel of an insight or a refreshing blast of clarifying wit on every page. David brings a delightfully contrary and hilariously cantankerous eye to the history of the English Monarchy. Informative, illuminating and very very funny * JESSE ARMSTRONG, CREATOR OF SUCCESSION AND PEEP SHOW * Mitchell clearly knows his history, with a book that owes as much to Monty Python as it does to Simon Schama * Andrew Marr * A Peep Show history of England * Sunday Times * Clever, amusing, gloriously bizarre and razor sharp. Mitchell - a funny man and a skilled historian - tells stories that are interesting and fun. His rants alone are worth the price of the book. And amid all the jokes and delightful nonsense, Mitchell sneaks in a serious message about English identity. Here is Horrible Histories for grownups - stripped of their finery, devoid of reverence, UNRULY's monarchs emerge as mortals with ordinary flaws. I learnt a lot and laughed a lot, and people who have never before picked up a history book will read and enjoy this one. That's an accomplishment * Gerard DeGroot, The Times * Chatty, irreverent and liberally sprinkled with gags and opinions. Horrible Histories with added swearing. * Guardian * I can’t recommend this book enough. Very funny and interesting, it is above all a proper work of history * Charlie Higson * A Punch-and-Judy show of awful people doing terrible things to one another. There is refreshing candour in how it calls out the bastards, bullies and brats who have donned England’s highest-carat hats. Above all, it’s a funny read, playful and well-meaning . . . told in a fizzing and indignant style, rammed with entertaining tangents. A sleek rod of Mitchell, fired from a rail gun, passing straight through the reader’s skull * Daily Telegraph * Who knew a history of England's rulers could be this hilarious? A brilliantly entertaining romp through monarchs. * i * Provocative, energeticlly comical, unortodox. Stuffed full of comical scenes and anecdotes, which only an author with a fine sense of the absurd could give us. * Mail on Sunday * A riotously funny romp through one thousand or so years of English history. I cannot remember the last time I laughed as much as I did listening to Unruly. Mitchell’s take on history is unremittingly funny as well as insightful. There are so many exquisite turns of phrase. I had to stop listening whilst cooking for fear I’d drop red-hot pans, I was shaking with laughter so much. * Entertainment Focus * I relished a crash course in English history with comedian David Mitchell’s ambitious Unruly. * Daily Express, Books of the Year * A historical tour of English rulers in a book that is like no history lesson you've had to endure before. A semi-serious book full of weird and wonderful spectacle, scandal, and brutality. * Luxury London * He brings his typically wry style to an exploration of England's monarchy * History Revealed *

Author Information

David Mitchell is a BAFTA Award-winning actor, writer and comedian who has starred in many of the UK's best-loved TV shows, including Peep Show, That Mitchell and Webb Look and Upstart Crow. He is a team captain on Would I Lie to You? (BBC One), the host of The Unbelievable Truth on Radio 4 and one of the Observer's most popular columnists. Unruly- A History of England's Kings and Queens is his first history book.

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