Yep, part 2. Not sure if this isn't entirely deviating from my PhD research now, but no matter. I'm sure I can eloquently argue in its favour, if need be. Co-written by Jamie Sellers, probably.
1066 AND ALL THAT
by W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman
(Penguin, 1st pub 1930, 1960 reprint)
Respect for the 70-year byline: even as late as the Seventies, this was as necessary a humorous textbook for boys as Nigel Molesworth’s How To Be Topp or the Wisden cricket annuals at certain English public schools,. Two grown adults take a witty, anecdotal, nonsensical look at British history, with cartoons attached. To Wit: “Henry VII’s Statecraft (Morton’s Fork). This was an enormous prong with which his minister Morton visited the rich citizens (or burghlers as they were called). If the citizen said he was poor, Morton drove his fork in a certain distance and promised not to take it out until the citizen paid a large sum of money to the king. As soon as this was forthcoming, Morton dismissed him, at the same time shouting ‘Fork Out!’” Not rib-tickling historical hilarity of Blackadder standards, you may think – but believe us, this was the literary equivalent of going up to a school chum and asking what you call a member of the National Union Of Teachers. A NUT. Get it? Opinion is divided as to whether the jokes in this book have any contemporaneous value, but as to whether you enjoy them or not probably depends on whether you’ve been taught any history in the first place. (Lowbrow readers may care to draw a parallel with Viz’s own Charlie Pontoon, the hopeless newspaper columnist.) You can blame this lot for The Goons, if you like – someone ought to. Wry, dry and very, very public school English: not at all the standard nowadays. Sigh.
Cost: 50p Bargain value: 4 (not in very good condition)
Cover: 6 (framed in the classic Penguin orange and white)
Author’s authenticity count: 8 (one author was head boy at Fettes College, Edinburgh, and the other was housemaster at Charterhouse, so presumably he administered the spankings)
1 comments:
(From Facebook)
Rez Guthrie at 4:03pm June 22
I think I have a very dusty and dog-eared copy of that kicking about somewhere, alongside ‘The Art Of Course Acting’ and the ‘Down With Skool’ books. They never taught proper history at my school anyhoo, so this was as good a text as any!
Mike Powell at 6:21pm June 22
This is “a good thing”…
Tim Footman at 8:11pm June 22
“…America was thus clearly Top Nation and history came to a .”
Colin Buchan Liddell at 12:00am June 23
They don’t teach this kind of history anymore. They only teach ‘guilt history’ nowadays – the holocaust, slavery, etc., for which the great British working class are supposed to feel guilty, etc.
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