Most everyone on the internet (which makes most of you, as you're reading this review via the internet portal of Ciao) has encountered, either in a website or a mass emailing, various humourous and hilarious historical satires, usually presented (alas, urban legend alert!) as inaccuracies found in actual student papers. Mistakes such as:
+ Egypt is in a desert, and watered by irritation. +
+ Handel was half-German, half-Italian, and half-English. +
+ Lincoln lived at the Gettysburg Address. +
And so on.
Well, in the days before email and websites (and photocopiers, to pass such gems around the office), these things did exist, and were, because of the difficulty in finding it by other means, published.
Much to our pleasure, one such collection can still be found. '1066 and AllThat' is a humourous if fractured look ...
Advantages: funny and light reading Disadvantages: requires a knowledge of history to some degree
Many books, history books especially, seem to have the hidden agenda of promoting the career of the author as much as its educational value. This is one of the few books that can by placed in the historical camp that is designed to console the reader, although it sits just as readily, if not more so, in the category marked satire. Seen by many as a mockery of history, 1066? is actually a lot cleverer than that. In the same way that comedian Les Dawson's hideous piano playing routine relied on him being totally accomplished in that field, this satire of the history of Britain also requires an in depth knowledge on the part of the satirist. Mockery on the other hand is just throwing stones. Taking the tack that history is not about what actually happened, it's about what you remember, Sellar and Yeatmans book sets out a textbook like ...
Advantages: Funny, funny, funny - surreal humour at its best Disadvantages: Too busy laughing to find any...
1066 And AllThat is truly a unique book. I first read it as a child - my dad remembered liking it when he was a kid and got it for me (everybody say aaaaaaaaah?). Like many things it got lost duringthe passage of time, but I recently rediscovered it - when I moved house it had somehow managed to make the transition with me. And did I enjoy the book as much as I had before the terrible onset of adulthood?
No - I enjoyed it much more!
So What Is It??
This book by Walter Carruthers Sellar (Aegrot: Oxon) and Robert Julian Yeatman (failed M.A., etc, Oxen), illustrated by John Reynolds (Gent), is a history book like no other? "A Memorable History of England, comprising all the parts you can remember, including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates". In the compulsory preface it tells you that "History is not what you ...
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