I have just spent an afternoon in a thrilling world. A world of Top Nations and Great Rulers. Of Wicked Knights and Ordinary People. A place of Troubles and Bothers and Goings-On. Where there are Good Men and Bad Men and Kings go Rampaging and Conquering and winning Big Battles and lots of Glory against Enemies.
I was reading H. E. Marshall’s Kings & Things, a brisk canter through English history that was first published in 1937 but was out of print for years until it was republished last month. I inhaled almost the whole thing in one sitting. All school librarians should present their charges with the same opportunity.
Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall (yes, I, too, initially assumed that she was a bloke) wrote straightforward historical narratives aimed at children. They are big on Empire and putting the Great into Great Britain, and so in recent decades were not regarded as a Good Thing. But last year her classic, Our Island Story, was reissued — it sold 40,000 in hardback at £20 a time. There’s clearly quite a modern appetite for her stuff.
Kings & Things has a whiff of a different era. In the preface Marshall, who died in 1941, says that the stories of English history (her Scotland’s Story is also just out) are recounted in the hope that they will be read to children before bedtime by “Mothers and Nannies and other great Potentates of Nursery Land”. Her style is a pastiche of how a child might write, but is in fact very artfully done.
The span of history from the Romans to Elizabeth II (this version has been brought up to date by the editor) is condensed with exquisite panache. The Civil War, for example, is summed up thus: “If you wore sad clothes and had short hair, you were thought to be an Enemy of the King. If you wore long curly hair and gay clothes, you were thought to be an Enemy of the People. It was all very Difficult and Confusing.”
Her tone is crisp and gently humorous. Elizabeth I “was very Clever and she thought she was very pretty, too. She wasn’t really pretty, but she used to wear lovely dresses and lots of jewellery, and she always looked very grand.” On the death of George II: “No one was very sorry, for the People couldn’t love a fat old German who thought more about his petty little Hanover than about Great Britain and all its Colonies.”
She pithily identifies key historical themes. English Kings “were always quarrelling with the French, but all the same they had quite a habit of marrying French ladies.” On the reign of Edward IV she comments: “All the old Troubles and Bothers about Kings’ Uncles began over again . . .”
For all the lightness of tone, however, the book is remarkably solid. The historian David Starkey regards Marshall as “astonishingly accurate, quite brilliant”.
“Do you want to know something?” asked a friend who writes history books when I told him what I was reading. “I often use H. E. Marshall as reference.”
That’s because the whole chronology from the Romans onwards is there in accessible, readable form. We hear a lot about how disjointed our teaching of history is. And there is much truth in this. I studied history at university and left with enormous, glaring gaps in my knowledge that I am still trying to address.
There needs to be a balance between learning how to use sources and pretending to live like Victorian chambermaids and having command of the basic facts. If all children left school with a framework in their heads of where the Tudors and the Stuarts and the Hanoverians fitted in, how the Empire rose and fell and knowledge of such things as Henry VIII’s wives, and why the Cavaliers and Roundheads were at each other’s throats, they would not only be able to understand references that come up all the time, but would also have a deeply rooted understanding of how Britain evolved over the past millennium.
Where Kings & Things is clever is that it isn’t all about dates. In fact, dates appear only in a timescale at the end “as a slight guide to the ‘Grown Ups’ in the event of uncomfortable questions being asked”.
Of course, in a book such as this there are lacunae. And some of them, such as the omission of Sir Thomas More from the 12 pages on Henry VIII, look like carelessness. And the book lacks some of the vivid colour that is served up to kids by many fun, modern writers.
So if you do read it to an eight-year-old, you’ll need to be ready to bluff furiously or do some quick research. It is left to 21st-century cartoons in the new edition to suggest that Edward II might have been gay, that Joan of Arc was burnt at the stake or that Nelson reputedly asked Hardy to kiss him.
But Kings & Things is supposed to be a starting point for children. And for adults, who have forgotten — or perhaps never knew — who the Black Prince was, what the Glorious Revolution was all about and which George was which, I’d stick it on the Christmas list.
Pop! goes the lily, and I blow up
I made a real hash of bollocking some children at Kew Gardens the other day. The kids were tugging at huge water lilies. Two mothers stood by doing nothing. I dithered. I wanted to tell the women to get a grip of their kids before they destroyed splendid specimens at a World Heritage Site, but was loath to interfere; people go ballistic at the slightest suggestion that they might be bad parents. “Pop!” A lily was snapped off. The women said nothing. A small hand reached out to another thick stem. “Please don’t do that!” I snapped. The kid stopped. The mother bristled, weighing whether to give me an earful. In the end she moved the children on, reluctant to concede in front of me that they were out of order on her watch. Next time I’ll be straight in with the bollocking. Of the gormless mother.
Poll position
Remember Katherine Harris? The Florida Secretary of State oversaw the 2000 presidential recount that led to George W. Bush’s victory. Demonised by Democrats as a sort of Republican Cruella De Vil, she nonetheless went on to become a congresswoman. She’s now running for the Senate, but is seen as so polarising that even Jeb Bush, George’s brother, has abandoned her. Many will doubtlessly be shuddering with delicious Schadenfreude at her 35-point deficit in the polls. But I rather admire her spirit. A former staff member said working for her was like “insanity camp” and one of three departed campaign managers programmed his phone to play the theme from The Exorcist when she called. She says “they can make the polls say whatever they want” and blames a vast left and right-wing conspiracy. Go, girl!
