As with all celebrities, it’s best they don’t open their mouths. David Mitchell is the latest.
Comedian David Mitchell caused something of a stir at the weekend when he branded Battle of Agincourt victor King Henry V a ‘warmonger’ and ‘nasty’.
The star of hit sitcom Peep Show was speaking at Cheltenham Literature Festival to promote his new book about the history of England’s kings and queens.
Thanks in part to William Shakespeare’s play Henry V, the monarch’s victory over the numerically superior French at Agincourt in 1415 has become the stuff of legend.
Mitchell however insisted Henry was a ‘troublemaker’ and ‘not very civilised’ in his desire to take over France.
Right, so having written a book about it, he should know better. Henry was descended from the Angevin kings. In other words, French. Like the Angevin Kings, he considered himself King of his French dominion. It was mostly why we were fighting over there in the first place. The Hundred Years war was pretty much a dynastic one. Henry was a man of his time, he did things we don’t tend to do today – well, mostly we don’t do today as some folk think invading someone else’s territory is still okay in the 21st Century. Claiming your ancestors’ ancient land rights was about par for the course back then. Henry was doing what was expected of medieval kings. To brand him as a troublemaker and a warmonger is steeped in ignorance – even if you have written a book about it. A book I will not waste time reading, frankly.
Mitchell also said Henry’s House of Plantagenet was ‘obsessed’ with their ‘supposed rights to be kings of France’, but added: ‘By the standards of our time, that is just warmongering.’
Idiot. The standards of our time did not exist then. Only a fool judges a man by standards that did not exist when he was alive.
If he wasn’t a nasty warmonger he wouldn’t have stayed king for very long in those days.
Well, quite. He was a man of his time.
He would be a Norman. So really he was a descendant of Scandinavians who took over, first France, and then Engerland. Those pesky Norsemen.
It was a family squabble with the poor Anglo-Saxons just, not cannon fodder, but some-other-nasty-weapon fodder. Sort of like “Eastendahs” without the Dum,Dum, Dummer Dummer Dum.
Why is “comedian” not in “inverted commas” or at least qualified by “alleged” ?
Better to be thought an idiot than open his mouth and prove it. It also speaks volumes for the quality and depth of his research.
Ah, but there’s a risk. If you acknowledge that language, people, societies and ways of thinking were substantially different in the past (and they were) then logically our modern day sensibilities are not absolute either. They may be better, they may be worse. But the politically correct cannot acknowledge that as they depend on their righteous authority to control others.
Good point, never thought of that.
The other thing I hate is that hose people want you to assume that they would have acted differently back then when it is quite obvious that they would have been nobodies who would have been doing as they were told.
I thought the idea of talking about your book was to encourage people to buy it?
Unless he does a follow up bit of promo, pointing out that the pages are perforated and absorbent, it could be a bit of a flop…
“The past is a different country. They do things differently there” This was a fundamental rule I was taught when researching history, never ever bring your contemporary points of view with you.
I’ll treat his opinions on British history with the same respect I gave Terry Jones’ on the Crusades. Has David Starkey reviewed the book? Should be fun.
Is Dan Snow actually an historian, or did he just ride in on his Dad’s coattails?