"1066 And All That" - A Good Thing or a Bad King?

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(for non-British readers: it's a spoof history text book written in 1930, purporting to be all the interesting bits of history as mis-remembered by the schoolboy mind)

I used to love this book when I was younger, and indeed read it so many times that it fell apart.

However, when I was explaining it to a friend who'd never heard of it, I realised it sounded a bit dud. Surely I'm wrong?

― Mark C (Mark C), Thursday, 3 April 2003 13:23 (twenty-one years ago) link

i was obssessed with this book when i was about 12. my copy also fell apart. it went through an arc of funniness: it got funnier as i learnt more history and understood more of the references. then it got less funny as i started to realise how obvious the jokes were.

it's very silly obviously but this is not a Bat Thing. kind of reminds me of p.g.wodehouse type humour.

the follow-up, however, (And Now All This) is total dud.

― pete b. (pete b.), Thursday, 3 April 2003 13:47 (twenty-one years ago) link

Bat Thing! that was a great book too, pulp horror, anyone remember it?

― pete b. (pete b.), Thursday, 3 April 2003 13:48 (twenty-one years ago) link

1066 is fantastic. Rufus - A Ruddy King.

"And Now All This" is way way ahead of its time. Woology! Random pictures of figs! Knitting instructions! Dreams about loofahs! Jokes in Hindi!

― Sam (chirombo), Thursday, 3 April 2003 13:58 (twenty-one years ago) link

It's the Finnegans Wake you can read

― the pinefox, Thursday, 3 April 2003 13:59 (twenty-one years ago) link

it must have been written in the 40s/50s cos it ends with America becoming top nation after WWII and history coming to a.

― Alan (Alan), Thursday, 3 April 2003 14:15 (twenty-one years ago) link

Hey, I've got that book and I've only flipped through it once. But then I got it in my 20s.

― toraneko (toraneko), Thursday, 3 April 2003 14:19 (twenty-one years ago) link

Richard Rorty's gloss on Hegel is derived from this book: "and then Germany became Top Nation and history ended".

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Thursday, 3 April 2003 14:24 (twenty-one years ago) link

Possibly the most important source of my writing style.

Actually had critical content as well as silliness content: the phrase "A Good Thing" was used in parody of Whig history, where every event in the past was judged on how well it took us to the Good (Protestant Ethic, constitutional monarchy) present.

― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Thursday, 3 April 2003 14:49 (twenty-one years ago) link

Soy Americano, and I had this as a kid and loved it. Tho the parts of it that aren't common history to the US (post Renn, say) are still pretty much a mystery. I couldn't tell a good, uh, Pitt the Elder joke from a bad one.

― g--ff c-nn-n (gcannon), Thursday, 3 April 2003 14:53 (twenty-one years ago) link

And Now All this is grebt for the section on Psycho Babycraft!

Hush a bye babies
Hush quite a lot
Bad babies get rabies
And have to be shot

What abt Garden Rubbish? With Angus McFungus, the Scotch (sic) Gardener. Ph34r his beetling brows & tam o'shanter!

― MarkH (MarkH), Thursday, 3 April 2003 15:40 (twenty-one years ago) link

Hmm, I was convinced history ended in 1918 when the US became Top Nation. Don't forget they won the First World War for us too, yawn.

― Mark C (Mark C), Thursday, 3 April 2003 21:02 (twenty-one years ago) link

twenty years pass...

mark c otm the war in question was the great war

i like this little piece of nonsense very much and even tho british history is a distantly woolly hobby for others asnfar as im concerned i still get enough of the jokes to enjoy the threads that run through it

― close encounters of the third knid (darraghmac), Monday, 8 January 2024 22:14 (nine months ago) link

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