From the off I guess it’s best to make it clear, if it wasn’t already, that the David Mitchell who wrote this book is the British actor, comedian and writer known for the likes of Peep Show, his comedy partnership with Robert Webb and shows like Would I Lie To You not the author responsible for Cloud Atlas, The Bone Clocks and others.
In Unruly: A History Of England’s Kings And Queens, Mitchell really does what it says on the cover, charting the English monarchy from the early ‘dark ages’ to 1603 when James VI of Scotland and first of England acceded and combined the monarchies.
While such a book could easily be an exceptionally dry list of dates, events and facts, in Mitchell’s hands it becomes far more than that.
While it does start with a fairly formal looking set of family trees of the various royal families, maps and list of names and dates, when the book begins proper, with King Arthur (‘He didn’t exist. I know, it’s a disappointing start…’) it’s clear the tone is going to be somewhat more irreverent.
Dividing the ‘story’ into four sections with titles like Pre-Willy, Here Comes The Reign Again and Everything’s Coming Up Roses, the less than conventional approach continues, but along with it comes a great deal of what certainly feels like accurate information.
In the first section, where facts are somewhat harder to come by, Mitchell compresses the various reigns into different groups, highlighting quite how confusing and arbitrary the notion of kings could be in medieval times, before, from 1066 onwards, dedicating a chapter to each individual doing a great job of explaining the personal and political intrigues that went on around each.
What makes this all work so well, beyond the tone which is great and falls somewhere around the You’re Dead To Me podcast and the Horrible Histories TV show combined with a lighter end academic text, is Mitchell’s political outlook which, by his own admission, falls somewhat into the current British version of centre-left giving a view of royalty and monarchy that, while not entirely hostile, is far from sycophantic, pandering or painfully jingoistic, exposing the faults with not just the individuals, but the system as a whole, while also making it clear how it has factored into making society we know now what it is, for good and ill.
Along with that he does a great job of introducing a streak of modern satire which, for readers now at least, adds an extra relatable level as he draws comparisons between current politics and historical events in a way that’s both hilarious but also exceptionally pertinent (though may date it somewhat in years to come).
This all makes Unruly: A History Of England’s Kings And Queens something of a joy, packed with detailed but delivered in such a way as to make it an easy read and hugely accessible, while the audio book version, which I’ve dipped in and out of since finishing reading the book, is also terrific with each chapter, narrated by Mitchell, being listenable either individually or as a whole.
Tommy Girard 
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