Because I hate smug people who act like they’re better than me because they know something I don’t, I’ve been trying to learn history. Even though I got an ‘A’ GCSE, I don’t remember learning very much at school – the gag being that, because of changes in the curriculum, I ended up doing the First World War twice and so thought there had been two First World Wars.
What I do know has been a result of my own reading and visiting of castles and other places of old and watching of DVDs. But a few years ago I decided to learn all the Kings and Queens of England since the Normans. From memory:
Willy I, Willy II, Harry I, Steven (who was crap), Maud (who doesn’t count), Harry II (Plantagenet), Dicky I (Julian Glover), John (Leonard Rossiter - died of the shits), Harry III, ‘Lofty’ Ted I, Ted II, Ted III, his grandson Dicky II (who was a right prat), replaced by Harry IV, Harry V (Kenneth Branagh), Harry VI (godbotherer), Ted IV, back to Harry VI, back to Ted IV, Ted V (who doesn’t count), Dicky III (Ron Cook), Harry VII (Tudor), Harry VIII (Ray Winstone, married to Katy Aragon, saucy Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour – not the same one from Live and Let Die, ugly Anne Cleves, Katy Howard, Katy Parr), Ted VI, Lady Jane Grey (who doesn’t count), bloody Mary I, Lizzy I (Miranda Richardson), Jimmy I (Stuart), Charlie I (beheaded), Rump, Nominated Assembly, Olly Cromwell, Dicky Cromwell, back to Rump, Charlie II, Jimmy II, Willy III and Mary II, Annie, Georgie I (Hanover), Georgie II, Georgie III (Nigel Hawthorne), Georgie IV (Hugh Laurie), Willy IV, Vicky (Miriam Margolyes), Ted VII, Georgie V (Windsor), Ted VIII (fascist), stammering Georgie VI, Lizzy II (Helen Mirren), and that’s it.
