Noble Blood - The 'Unruly' British Monarchy (with David Mitchell)

Episode Date: November 19, 2024

Comedian, writer, and actor David Mitchell joins the podcast to discuss his newest book, Unruly: The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens. The book is an overview of the monarchs from King Arthur to Elizabeth I, but it's also a cultural analysis of how the stories we tell ourselves about kings inform who we are. The book is available now in paperback. Support Noble Blood: — Bonus episodes, stickers, and scripts on Patreon — Noble Blood merch — Order Dana's book, 'Anatomy: A Love Story' and its sequel 'Immortality: A Love Story'See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Vodam. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot.

But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, The cat just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of IHeart Radio and grim and mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised. I'm so thrilled to be talking to the brilliant David Mitchell, who's an incredible comedian, actor, writer, television show creator, icon of British panel shows, an author of several books, but his latest book, Unruly, The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens, is now out in paperback. If you're a listener of this podcast, you will absolutely love this book. It's such a phenomenal analysis, not only of the early Kings and Queens of England, starting from before William I thought was a brilliant decision, but an analysis really of what our historical understanding

of those kings says about British culture and human culture as a whole. David, thank you so much for joining me. No, not at all. Thank you for having me. Thank you for that lovely introduction. So just to start, what inspired you to write a book about the British monarchy? Well, it was definitely partly the global pandemic in that I was sitting around doing nothing and I sort of went through a long period of frustration at all of the books and screenplays that everyone else seemed to be using their time to write while I sat there and miserably refreshed the BBC news page in the hope of some sign of an end to it all. And then finally, when there was some sign of an end to it all,

I found something to do, which was to initially sit down and start typing about how the arrival of COVID felt a bit like the arrival of the Vikings, must have felt to the Anglo-Saxons, as in it was just something that came out of the blue and was a real pain for everyone. It was, you know, literal and metaphorical pain ensued. So I literally started typing that chapter. I think because of that, you know, the weirdness of COVID and the suddenness, do you do think more about history? Because you think, oh my God, this is a bit of it that's happening. It's just happening suddenly to me. And it's not out of a truptu. And it's not out of a trend really. I mean, obviously people relentlessly talk about how it was out of a trend and we

should have seen it coming and why wasn't there more PPE and all the covers, etc, etc. But they weren't saying it beforehand or if they were, no one was listening. So I sort of, I think broadly speaking, no one saw it coming. I mean, the Anglo-Saxons thought that they should have seen the Vikings coming by, you know, and it was all because they hadn't prayed enough. And there's really no evidence of a connection between their lack of praying and the arrival of Norse warriors. But, you know, you start thinking about your powerlessness in the universe and that's how a lot of people in the middle ages felt all the time because they really didn't know what the hell was going on. So it was a natural thing to start typing about and then

it was great that I just had that freedom for a few months just to play around with it and find a tone of voice that I hope is funny for talking about the past in a, and not in a detailed way, but in a way that gives an overview for people who wish they had more of an overview of in the of my book, the Kings and Queens of England. So yes, by the time we were allowed to go out and go to cafes again, I'd written a third of it, and that meant I was bound to finish it, or that third would have been wasted. I intend to write another book, but I'm not quite sure how I'll do it without a pandemic. Well, I was going to say, well, we would all hope for that, but let's just say if there was another pandemic, that would be the slight silver lining. Well, thank you.

Where did you begin in your historical research? Obviously, you cover a wide swath of history. What was sort of your process like of finding sources or reading? Genuinely, I started writing about what I knew about already and to try and find a funny way through it. And then when I sort of realized, actually, I've got to a point I don't know what happened now. Then I just read around it.

And I can't pretend to have gone back to primary sources in any way, but I just read some books about it and got my sense of what was vaguely going on and tried to re-express it in a way that's comic and informative. And I see myself as a comedian, not a historian. And I thought the first thing the book needs to be, if at all possible, is amusing. And if it can be amusing through things that are true and in my view sort of historically matter, then that would be hopefully a rewarding read. Rather than taking, you know, obviously you can find funny things in history in terms of broadly, the disgustingness of life then, the lack of plumbing, the weird superstitions.

You can do that. The existence of King Henry the 8th. Yeah, exactly. Or you can try and do what I hope I've done, at least partly, is take the things that were important and see the funny side of that. And that doesn't mean, because I'm a big believer. the anything that matters is looked at in a certain way funny. And if it doesn't matter, it's never that funny.

The best comedies have always been about things that really matter. You know, the heart of the Simpsons is a story of disappointment and a failed dream. And there's a great line in it. I think that, you know, be the cause of an answer to all of life's problems. And in that, there's a sort of deep truth about human disappointment that makes that show much funnier than if it was just, you know, funny about silly things. They should put that on the Emmy campaigns. I haven't seen that on the billboards. Well, I think the greatest truth comes through comedy, I think. And, you know, someone who's tried to say funny things about the news at various times in my career, I thought, well, I'll try that about what was the news, which is history.

One thing that I love about this book that I mentioned briefly in the introduction is that you choose to start earlier than William the First, than William the Conquer, where the counting sort of begins. But there's so much British English history that happens before then. And particularly, I loved your analysis of King Arthur. Can you talk a little bit about how the myth of King Arthur sort of is understood in modern day Britain? King Arthur is probably the most famous king in some ways. It's probably more programmes made about Henry VIII these days. But he is an incredibly famous figure, the original good king, who reigned at some point after the Romans had left and before the Anglo-Saxons arrived, and a wonderful, very, very pure and Christian kingdom.

And this is a lovely idea lent on and enjoyed for centuries by other kings, by people who were sad that their king wasn't better, and they thought if only he could have been more like good old King Arthur was. And, you know, has been dramatized for television and in films, and it's a really lovely idea. The only problem is there is absolutely zero evidence that he existed at all. And, you know, he just didn't. It's just not possible.

I mean, he looks like a medieval king in all the pictures, and that's because the key time of imagining and enjoying imagining him was the Middle Ages, and they didn't really think about. about whether people wore the same clothes hundreds of years earlier as they did. So that's a bit of a clue. Why would there be this sudden, basically, totally medieval king, a bit like Edward I, Edward I, third, cropping up soon after the last toga just rotted,

and before the first boat comes over from Denmark, it just doesn't add up. And the monks of Glastonbury Abbey, who were, you know, nothing if not entrepreneurial, created a grave for King Arthur and his queen, and everyone thought, well, he must have existed. He's got a grave. But, no, it's, you know, you could say the same about Mickey Mouse and his castle. So, yes, King Arthur is a lovely idea, but he didn't exist.

But very, very important if you're writing a book about kings, because that's the template. That's what everyone was saying a king should be. And they didn't. And there weren't great many periods of the past, and we're not necessarily that great at it now even. They weren't great at hoping for a better future. What they could do, though, is hark back to a better past. But they didn't necessarily really know what the past was like.

So they sort of invented a utopian past in King Arthur, or certainly utopian when it comes to kingship, and decided that's what they would hark back to. I found that idea in your book very striking with a lot of modern parallels of how motivating it is for people to harken back to an imaginary past whether or not that past actually existed. Well, exactly. And our views, our memories of the past, the issue of making America great again is hanging over this conversation. So I'm just going to say that is an attempt to hark back to something in people's minds and whether or not that thing ever existed is, well, certainly unproved either way. It was a different world in all of the West in the 1950s and 60s, and in many ways it was a worse world,

but in some ways it was a better world. Obviously, there are people who want to cherry pick elements of the past and say, let's get back to that. It was better. One of the things that was better for us all, of course, is that we were younger. So, you know, our backs hurt a bit less, You know, our knees were less troublesome. Our death was further away. And you can't actually get back to that. Our parents weren't telling us about all the bad things happening on the news. And movies were better because we, of course, weren't watching them with a critical eye.

Yes, quite. So, you know, you can't help. Nostalgia is a powerful force. And even, you know, it's possible to feel nostalgia even for great misery in one's own past. And that's just because it's gone now and will never be recaptured. And so it has a kind of rose-tinted aura. What's up, everyone? I'm Ego Wodom.

My next guest, you know from Step Brothers Anchorman, Saturday Night Live and the Big Money Players Network. It's Will Ferrell. Woo-woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with them one day. And I was like, and Dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through, and I know it's a place that come look for up and coming talent.

He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. Yeah. He goes, but there's so much luck involved. And he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar. of, you know, the cat just hang in there.

Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks Dad on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Vodam. My next guest, you know from Step Brothers Anchorman, Saturday Night Live and the Big Money Players Network. It's Will Ferrell.

Woo. Woo! Woo! My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through, and I know it's a place that come look for up and coming talent.

He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. Yeah. He goes, but there's so much luck involved. And he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat, just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck.

Listen to Thanks Dad on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. One idea that I love in this book is the notion that the, for lack of a better phrase, Da Vinci codification of trying to find the real king Arthur is ultimately a meaningless exercise, because even if you found a man who happened to be called Arthur, he wouldn't be the king that he became in popular legend. Well, no, exactly. And people are so desperate for King Arthur to have existed, you know, understandably, it would be really cool that they seem willing to drop almost every meaningful attribute, I'd say including his name. That's sort of go, maybe he was based on some major chieftain who ruled the Britons, you know, soon after the legions left and

the Anglo-Saxons arrived. And he said, well, yes, okay. I mean, obviously there were powerful figures then, because people lived, and so there will have been people bossing them around. That's the way of the world. But in what meaningful way are any of them King Arthur? And yes, I suppose King Arthur is based on them because that's the time in history that he's supposedly sort of cited. But unless any of these people were in any way, you know, good in the same ways as King Arthur, then the basing him on them is not very meaningful. Who in your research of this book, which goes from the imaginary King Arthur up until Elizabeth I, would you say is the most underrated king that you came across? I've got a soft spot for Henry I, and he's certainly not very highly

rated at the time. I don't suppose he felt underrated. He was, you know, everybody said he was a very successful king. But I think he's largely forgotten now. And the reason he interests me is that he feels very professional. And you sort of feel that the government under him was, he had an interest, not necessarily in the priorities that modern government have, but he wanted order. He wanted expansion of his own realm, but sort of to a limited extent. He wasn't going mad. for that. He wanted an orderly succession to the next generation. He very much didn't get that, but he really worked at it. So you sort of think that that's not that nightmareish for the people at the time. If you've got a king like that, then that is reasonably competent government.

And that may sound like faint praise, but in the context of the Middle Ages, it isn't faint praise. It's high praise because the standard of government was dreadful. So I think Henry the first, I think if all the kings had been like Henry I first, then being a medieval peasant would have been 40% more pleasant than it actually turned out to be. So, yeah, I'll put in a word for him. I do love the emphasis over the book of predictability and the value of stability and understanding what's coming next. And whether that is knowing which son is going to become king next or knowing that you're not going to go to war and lose all your holdings in Normandy, predictability feels like a sort of undersung factor in what makes a good king. It's not usually as glamorous in a conversation when compared to war or conquering or crusades.

Basically, they knew at the time, as far as I can tell, that there was no amount of good stuff that any individual ruler could do that was as bad as what could go wrong if there was a disputed succession. And they were very much happening. The whole principle of kingship is saying, never mind how good the ruler is, let's just know who it is. Because when we don't know who it is, that civil war. And the very basic stuff that we expect from our government stopping us being invaded, maybe a bit of help if the crops fail, you know, low-level law and order,

that will collapse if we don't know who the king is. And even quite bad kings might keep those basic services limping. along. So by saying, and in the early part of the book, the Anglo-Saxons, they didn't have the principle of primogeniture, so it wasn't necessarily the eldest son who was supposed to succeed. So quite often, when an Anglo-Saxon king died, there was a mini-civil war while his sons fought it out for who was going to run the kingdom. And that's actually a marginally more meritocratic system. You get the more effective warrior king tends to be the one that prevails. But that's, element of meritocracy was demonstrably not worth it for the amount of fighting and killing

that that system involved. Now, in a functioning democracy, you get fingers crossed an orderly succession when one government replaces the other. And that's a really important part of what makes a democracy work, because if you don't have that, you're better off just not changing the government ever, sticking with who you've got and then saying as clearly as possible in advance and when he dies, it'll be his son, and please may it just continue on this even keel for as long as possible. Because the worst things that happened in the Middle Ages weren't the things the king did. It was the times no one knew who the king was or couldn't agree on that. And that's the happened a lot in the Anglo-Saxon era with no primogeniture established. It happened

when Henry I first died and he wanted his daughter to succeed him. That did not go down well at the time. As seen on House of the Dragon. Right. Yes. And, you know, that was so there was, there was absolute, you know, hellish, it's known, unfashionably now, but it's known as the anarchy traditionally that period. And that's a hint that it wasn't nice. The Wars of the Roses, a few hundred years later, that's a long period of lack of clarity as to who the king was. That was the lesson of the age. But every so often, they broke their own rules. So Richard the second, absolutely terrible king, but undoubtedly the rightful king. Nobody ever really disputed his right to rule, however awful his conduct was. But in the end, he was so bad they couldn't

stand it. And the barons got rid of him and he basically killed him or allowed him to die and put another guy on the throne who was in every way more competent and they all liked him and, you know, he'll be much better. But they all felt they'd done wrong. The next king was Henry IV. He had a sort of very unstable, unhappy reign. But basically, thereon, that the office of King was never properly strong again. And there was a lot more fighting over who would be in charge after that. And so fundamentally, it wasn't worth it. They should have stuck with Richard II until he died. And there would have been less horribleness if they had. But at the time, they thought, well, this can't carry on.

To me, because it's a long time ago and all of the pain caused as long, you know, has receded well into the background, I find it funny. I find that quandary they're relentlessly in the aristocrats of sort of stability versus competence. I find that amusing, amusing to see them struggle with it, amusing how they've invented collectively this thing, kingship that they claim. claim God is into. So they give the ruler the sort of endorsement of the Almighty. That was a clever idea to have cooked up. But then the problem is, what if you have an absolute idiot, you know, slash murderous maniac who you're now saying is endorsed by God? What do you do about that? And should you just do nothing, you know, hope it gets better, wait till he dies. Should you try

and get rid of him? But then what are you saying? What's the system then? I think the other thing we forget is that they really bought into this. It might have been invented in the Middle Ages, the notion of kingship, but they didn't feel that they'd invented it. They thought it was something fundamental and natural and genuinely ordained by God. So as soon as they undermine it,

they feel, have we committed a terrible sin? And if they don't feel like that, they're just sort of rudderless in the universe, saying, well, who's supposed to look after us? Who's supposed to say, what's what? And we're quite used to the notion of atheism now. There are a lot of atheists, and there's no one who hasn't heard of the idea. So we've all contemplated that feeling that what if there is no order to the universe,

there is no big beardy guy in charge making sure we'll all be okay. And so even if we do decide we're religious and it's a sort of choice, in those days it wasn't a choice. They were told it was true in the same way we're told how to wire up. plug. And that must have been very, very comforting. And the idea of kingship was fundamentally linked to that. So as soon as the king is bad, as soon as they get rid of a king, then their whole notion of the universe is shaken. It's as if they suddenly discover that the solar system isn't as we believe it to be. I mean, there's that idea where if the king isn't chosen by God, then it's just a man in a gold hat. And we've created all of these institutions around him that are artificial and ultimately

meaningless, you know, hundreds of people bringing him his breakfast and organizing his jousts and everything that goes into kingship. What is it all for if it's not God, anointing this person as the leader of all of us? Exactly. A tremendous comfort comes from it. And the sort of duty to this figure and sort of trying to say, well, you know, the Lord moves in mysterious ways. So the king may seem like a maniac, but maybe this is all going to become good in the end. And throughout my book, you see people try and shore up that idea and you see them confront it, and it doesn't really come to any final conclusion. But at the end, there's still a sovereign on the throne claiming that they rule by divine sanction. I think the idea is less bought into by the

nobleman then than it had been a few hundred years earlier, but they're still going with it. But there is also something called a parliament, sort of slightly reigning in the monarchs. And that obviously is a prelude to the next chapter of English and British history when the parliament and the king end up fighting a war. But you can sort of see that that was inevitable because they were fundamentally always going to come to blows. If Henry I is sort of the unsung king or an underrated king in British history, who would you say is the most overrated king? Henry V, I think it's probably the most overrated. He had that one, one buzzy battle, though.

Amazing battle, Agincourt, definitely won against the odds. And he, by the end of his reign, was, you know, the heir to the French throne, as well as King of England. And so, you know, on his own terms, he was spectacularly successful. That's where I sort of play my comedians card and say, I'm allowed to take a step back from medieval kingship and say that the hundreds of years, of English kings, desperately trying also to be kings of France, was an enormous waste of energy, money, lives and effort.

And it was pointless. It was the wrong policy. The king of England will never be the king of France as well. The king of France will never be the king of England as well. It was just unworkable. But yet, English kings, for hundreds of years, their main focus was raising money to raise troops, to go over to fight battles in France with horrendous consequences for the people trying to just live

in France. And in the end, they usually failed. There are a few examples of that, you know, English history has sort of always cherished of these against the odds victories with the brave English archers defeating larger numbers of French knights. But you take a step back and what was the point in all of that? The King of England never became King of France. And it wouldn't have been good if they had. It was just a waste of time and blood and energy. And it's one of the things I like about Henry I first is that he didn't really try any of that. He was the Duke of Normandy.

He wanted control of Normandy. He'd like control of some other bits around Normandy if possible. But he didn't have any ridiculous ideas about also being King of France like Henry V and Edward III did or being, say, like Henry VIII did, being some sort of emperor or whatever. He knew his place. He had reasonable ambitions for a king of his scale, and that caused a lot less suffering. Henry V was a maniac, fueled by sort of religious fervor, very successful militarily. But what is the point in all of that energy and all of that killing of poor French nobleman

while they were wrapped up in armour? That's a fantastic read. I also, I think one of the most controversial. kings and controversial in the sense that people have very, very strong opinions on both sides of the issue is Richard III, because there are people who have very strong feelings. What are your feelings on Richard the Third? Well, my feeling, I take the conventional line on Richard the Third, which is that he is overwhelmingly the most likely person to have caused the deaths of his nephews, the princes in the Tower.

That's the key point of controversy over Richard the Third. He definitely took the throne, you know, usurped the throne from his nephew, who's referred to as Edward V, although he wasn't really meaningfully ever a king. But he definitely usurped the throne, but obviously plenty of people did that, including Henry I. That doesn't necessarily make you villainous in the context of English kingship. But it's also, he has always been accused of murdering his nephew, Edward V, and his brother, when they were boys in the Tower of London. and either murdering them himself or more likely having them murdered. I think he probably did that, and that is the conventional historical line. But Richard III has a lot of fans who think he was unfairly maligned,

largely as a result of Tudor propaganda. Because after Richard III fell, there was a regime change, the Tudor dynasty came in, and they had to justify them having taken the throne, and which they needed a lot of justification because they definitely weren't heirs to the throne by any of the conventions of inheritance. So they needed to cook up a story and the key part of their story was,

well, the king before was awful. He killed his nephews. He was a tyrant. And so, you know, obviously you have to be suspicious of the things they say about Richard III. But I don't know what else happened to those princes because nobody, as far as we know, nobody saw them for at least.

two years before Henry the 7th was on the scene. So I don't see that it's plausible that they were killed by the Tudors. I think it was very likely to have been Richard III. But I'm not saying that's definite. What amuses me is how much emotional investment people have in saying, no, Richard the Third was lovely. He was a great king. And he sort of go, well, we can't know.

We can't know for sure. We know the balance of probability. We know it's more likely. He killed the princes in the tower than anyone else. And we sort of just have to be satisfied with that. And you can enjoy and imagine Richard III, who was unfairly slandered by the Tudors, if you want to. But you can't tell yourself that was definitely the case

just because you find it an attractive idea. It kind of goes back to what you were saying about history being the story that we tell ourselves in that. It's very fun to imagine that it's a detective story that we can solve and not a incredibly messy series of complicated people and complicated events that will be forever unknowable. Well, exactly. All we have is the evidence that's come down to us and things have been written about it. We're not going to suddenly discover video footage of Henry the 7th, killing the young prince, Edward V. It's just not going to happen. There's always going to be a question mark over it.

So I thought in my overview, I'll say what I think probably happened. And the reason I think it probably went that way, that's what most people think. And that's the direction most of the evidence points in. But I fully accept we can't totally know. I don't want to keep you too long. But just as we wrap up the conversation, what I love about this book is not only is it an overview of the monarchs as they came, but also it fundamentally deepened, especially as an American, my understanding of how British people see themselves through the monarchy.

Is there something you learned about British identity or discovered over the course of writing this book that surprised you? Well, I think the more I thought about it, the more, I was very careful to say this is a book about the English kings. So it's not about the Scottish kings. Yes, I apologize. No, no, not at all. I'm not, but I'm sort of more explaining why I, I was so clear on that, partly because I, you know, Scottish history up to 6003 is a, you know, a linked but separate thing, ditto, Irish history.

And I wasn't going to pretend I'd covered them because I hadn't. So I've come in clean. This is just England. Obviously, after the period of my book onwards, the monarchy, the same monarchy is effectively shared by more parts of the British Isles. So it becomes the story is more unified into a story of British history, the divisions within it notwithstanding. What it struck me is that within the United Kingdom and the British Isles, the nations that aren't England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland have very, very strong senses of

cultural identity. And England doesn't. I don't think so. I think England's various sections of England have strong senses of identity, Cornwall and Yorkshire and London and Kent, and the north of England versus the south of England. These are strong senses. But England as a whole doesn't have a strong sense of itself as separate from Britain in the way Scotland and Wales do. To an American, I would say that the English identity, and correct me if I'm wrong,

seems to be exclusively bunting and baking in a tent and having a man poke at your bread and tell you if it's overproofed or not. Well, that certainly is a big part of identity. of our identity, but that program, confusingly, is not called the Great English Bake Off. So we have this issue of Englishness and Britishness, where they're distinct. For Scots, even the ones that don't want Scotland to become an independent country, even Scots in favour of the Union still have a strong sense of what is different about Scotland

from England, what Scotland's unique identity within Britain is. England, I don't think, has that sense. So England very much turns backward on its own history and at the center of its history is its monarchy. So I think I say early in the book, the monarchy is what England has instead of a sense of identity. And that's obviously a simplification. And I think there are many senses of identity in England, but no real unifying one. But the monarchy then becomes a sort of symbol of a unifying one, even for those that are against the monarchy, if you see what I mean. There it is, at the centre of us, whether you like it or not, it's there.

It's why England is so obsessed with its own heritage, obsessed with looking back with nostalgia, sort of returning to the point about nostalgia being something that people can invest in more wholeheartedly than a belief in a better future. And the Great British Bake Off is obviously part of that, because its entire aesthetic is a sort of idealised 1950s village England. But England has been largely metropolitan since the early part of the 19th century. And yet the typical England, the archetypal England, is about villages. Well, most people live in big cities in England.

We were the first industrialized nation. And yet we associate ourselves with rural areas. Well, there's something fundamentally absurd about that. We should be the most sort of urban focused of all the cultures. But no, we think of ourselves as rural, even though we're paid. not. And the monarchy being at the center of that is part of it. And we feel safe focusing on our monarchy because these days it's harmless and powerless. But nevertheless, it's sort of all we've got as our sort of badge of belonging. And forgive me because this book does stop

at Queen Elizabeth I'm curious on your read on the modern day monarchy. Do you think that that fundamental nostalgia and fondness for a sort of national story is, is enough to keep the monarchy going in the present day? I don't know, but I certainly have no problem with the constitutional monarchy at all. And I think there's something quite useful about having the figurehead of the country, the nominal most important person in the country, not actually being the person with the power. I think putting the power and the sort of dignity of nationhood in the same person can be problematic.

I say that at risk of, you know, of straying into topicality again. But I genuinely think it's useful that the person with the power, most power in Britain is the prime minister, but they have someone else who's nominally their boss. And obviously if he got rid of the monarchy, we would have to have a new constitution. We'd have to decide whether to have an executive presidency like in the United States and France or whether you have a president you elect but has little more power than a monarch. and, you know, I don't know how well we'd cope with that because if you've won an election, you should have power, shouldn't you?

Or, you know, we'd have to face up to all of that. And my fear is that we're going through a tricky time ourselves here. Faith in politicians and politics is of a sort of an all-time low, and this isn't really the best time to frame a new constitution. It would leave you so vulnerable to the Vikings. Excellent point, yes. And then we'd only have ourselves to blame. Well, unruly, the ridiculous history of England's kings and queens is out in paperback in the UK and across the pond.

You should absolutely pick it up. It is a delightful and such a smart greed. David Mitchell, I can't thank you again enough for this conversation. Thank you so much. Thank you very much for having me. I've really enjoyed it. Noble Blood is a production of IHeart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Air. Erin Manke. Noblemud is hosted by me, Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and research by

Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Courtney Sender, Amy Height, and Julia Milani. The show is edited and produced by Jesse Funk with supervising producer Rima Il Kali and executive producers Aaron Manke, Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. What's up, everyone? I'm Ego Vodam. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot. But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the

cat just hang in there yeah it would not be right it wouldn't be that there's a lot of luck yeah listen to thanks dad on the iHeart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts this is an iheart podcast guaranteed human