Books read today: An Utterly Impartial History of Britain (John O'Farrell), Rebecca and Rowena (William Makepeace Thackeray)
Our two pieces this evening make an interesting comparison; John O'Farrell's An Utterly Impartial History of Britain is a light hearted, extremely funny but nonetheless accurate and informative history of the British Isles starting (as history usually does) in 55 B.C. with Ceasar's sightseeing tour of England, and ending (as history usually does) in 1945 when America became Top Nation. Thackeray's Rebecca and Rowena is a very short piece of fan fiction (a vice in which I usually don't indulge) which both fixes the manifestly broken ending of Walter Scott's Ivanhoe and simultaneously sends up the whole historical romance genre.
Turning first to O'Farrell's piece; any comedic history of Great Britain stands in the shadow of 1066 and All That - the Shakespeare of history as comedy. Nevertheless (as O'Farrell identifies in the introduction) Sellar and Yeatman's classic assumes the reader knows some history (or, at least, has forgotten it). O'Farrell's book on the other hand assumes very little in the way of prior knowledge - in fact, I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a general but basic history of Britain.
I am generally very well disposed towards the concept of history as comedy - I once based an entire stand-up routine around the Schlieffen Plan* - and as far as I'm concerned, British history is pretty much comedy gold - from King John losing the crown jewels in the Wash (a joke first made about 5 minutes after the tide came in that day) to Wellington panicking that revolutionaries would storm the Tower of London.... by buying tickets and forming an orderly queue to come in and see the crown jewels. It's all good fun until someone loses an eye. Or their head. Or, in the case of Guy Fawkes, his testicles, his intestines, his stomach and then his head**. It is very much to O'Farrell's credit that he doesn't whitewash our history; he makes sure to point our just how unpleasant, nasty and just plain psychotic many of our rulers have been down the centuries - from the St Brice's Day Massacre (who the hell is St. Brice, anyway?), Ethelred the Unready's attempt to massacre all the vikings in England (yes, since you ask, it did end badly for Ethelred - a strong contender for the title of dumbest ever king of England - and when you consider his competition.....), to pointing out that William the Conqueror was (appropriately enough) a right royal bastard, it's all there.
It is interesting, given that history is written by the victors, how many people in England remain somewhat bitter about the result of the battle of Hastings (I know I am.... but then I still harbour a slight grudge about enclosure. And the dissolution of the monasteries. And Thomas a' Becket. The list goes on....). There's a general feeling that although Harold lost, he should have won really - he tried harder, and he was more romantic (just look at the names: Edith Swan Neck vs. Matilda), and he had a sense of humour (when Harald Hardrada, king of Norway, demanded the throne of England, Harold told him that as he was taller than other men, he could have seven foot of English earth, from his head to his foot... and then killed him. You probably had to be there). Whereas William the Conqueror just composed a giant book of what to steal. And we haven't had an actually English monarch since.
Scott's Ivanhoe, the basis for Thackeray's Rebecca and Rowena, takes the tensions between the Norman aristocracy and the Anglo-Saxon people and forges it into a captivating historical romance; Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe, disinherited son of the last remaining Saxon nobleman, Cedric of Rotherwood, finds himself torn between the affections of the royal, blonde, and frankly rather dull Rowena (heir to the line of Alfred the Great) and the raven haired, courageous, resourceful and beautiful Jewish doctor Rebecca. After a bunch of adventures, bumping into Robin Hood and the disguised Richard the Lionheart, a few battles and the odd siege, Ivanhoe regains his estates and his honour, and marries Rowena. He marries the wrong woman. And this is the problem Thackeray seeks to fix. Of course, one could argue about whether the problem needs fixing at all; Ivanhoe himself is very brave, very heroic and very conventional; he would never marry a woman who wasn't a Christian. And Rebecca would never leave the faith of her ancestors and she would not abandon who she is just for love - which is, of course, what makes her a stronger and more attractive character than Rowena. It is therefore completely appropriate, although also completely tragic, that Ivanhoe and Rebecca should go their separate ways at the end of the book.
Nevertheless, Thackeray wants Ivanhoe/Rebecca, and so Ivanhoe/Rebecca he shall have; after some unwarranted (although extremely amusing) character assassination of Rowena, he kills off Ivanhoe (he gets better) and then Rowena (she doesn't), and then he reunites Ivanhoe with Rebecca, and it's all going swimmingly, and then Rebecca converts to Christianity. Because William Makepeace Thackeray has missed the fucking point of the character. And then it ends. I get the impression the piece was motivated more by a dislike of the character of Rowena, than any real appreciation of the strength of Rebecca's.
Apart from the total disaster of an ending, the piece is otherwise very funny and does send up the whole historical romance genre excellently - it particularly needles the tendency for mysterious monks with marvellous medicines to appear when required, and the massively inflated body counts that the heroes of a romance can clock up. The final verdict: fan fiction: this is how you do it.
* Laugh? The audience didn't.
** Followed by his limbs; that was the quartering bit.
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