Unruly by David Mitchell

I borrowed Unruly by David Mitchell from my dad, after my son had read it. Published in paperback in 2024, it is a history of England’s kings and queens by the comedian and actor. To be honest, I wasn’t sure whether I would enjoy it. I’m not particularly interested in kings and queens or history, but my son told me it was worth reading. And I always like the chance to borrow a book, as it helps cut down the cost of my reading habit!

Unruly is very, very funny.

I don’t think it matters whether you’re interested in history or not. A lot of the stuff I read went into my head and straight out again, but it was full of swearing and sarcasm and had me laughing out loud a lot.

The book starts ‘Pre-Willy’ ie before William the Conqueror and goes right up to Elizabeth I. So no mad King George or Charles II the party king and definitely no Windsors.

But it is an interesting read about battles, weird lines of succession, kings inexplicably thinking they should be king of France as well as England and different kings ruling different parts of England. There were lots of killings, lots of people marrying close relatives and lots of very horrible people. There were plagues killing half the population, young princes dying in hunting accidents or on ships on yet another badly planned invasion of France. Princes, princesses and dukes were imprisoned in case they had a better claim to the throne than the actual king. England veered between Catholic and Protestant. Kings believed they really were put on this Earth by God and anybody who dared disagree wouldn’t last for long.

England really was a very dangerous place to live for many centuries.

The jokes, swearing and sarcasm never stop. David Mitchell likes to help us understand things by relating them to mundane parts of everyday 21st century life.

I really enjoyed Unruly, but it took me about twice as long to read as an average book. They typeface was very small and I couldn’t read it for such extended periods as I could read, for example, a detective novel. My brain needed a bit of time to recover!

If you’re interested in history, Unruly is basically Horrible Histories for grown ups. And even if you’re not interested in history, but you like swearing and sarcasm, it is well worth a read!

I would love it if David Mitchell wrote a sequel covering the period after the Tudors right up to the present day (or as near as he would dare get), but the conclusion of the books suggests that probably isn’t going to happen.