David Mitchell ROASTS History's Most Overrated Monarchs
Added 2025-07-18 15:39:06 +0000 UTChttps://youtu.be/8xdYOHTg3YA?si=K1lGFv4NlqqMIPzA
Comments
To "make OLD Bones" just means to live to an old age. Simple.
Dawn
2025-08-14 06:23:41 +0000 UTCThis realliy is Celeb/Peep Show star, ripping you off stuff...Get proper Historians...loads of them.
Karl Devereux
2025-08-01 16:09:01 +0000 UTC"Making one's bones" is an idiom that means to establish oneself, gain respect, or prove oneself, often through a significant accomplishment or action. (I had to look it up too)
Danny Heywood
2025-07-24 09:58:46 +0000 UTCDavid did a book tour in conversation style where he was interviewed by Alan Davies about the book. Went to see him in Newcastle front row and met him after the show and he signed my book and i took a photo with him David Mitchell has been an idol since I was a teenager and fell in love with Peep Show, was such a pleasure to actually meet him!
Michael
2025-07-20 14:09:55 +0000 UTCI thought this might be a bit dry if i'm honest, even though I love history myself, but it was very entertaining
Daz Parker
2025-07-20 09:51:51 +0000 UTCInteresting that you mentioned you thought it sounded a bit like Game of Thrones. George R. R. Martin admitted he drew heavy inspiration from the Wars of the Roses, and in some cases just full on copied events/characters and changed their names.
AdmiralDonkey
2025-07-19 23:22:06 +0000 UTCLol, the history of the British Isles might be even more wil than game of thrones
Ian Roxburgh
2025-07-19 15:54:41 +0000 UTCAnother thing that hits me is (just as for many) history and religion has become more and more interesting as I grow older. But also - you need someone inspirational to get over that first threshold between boredom/no-interest-at-all to wanting MORE. In school, these teachers were so incredibly boring and the school-books, written by people who probably were just as bored, just felt like being run over by a boring-machine of boredom while doing homework. So I get it why kids in general are pretty uneducated in tpoics, which today are some of the most important ones to know. Because the wars and conflicts we have today ALL relate to history and religion, some to recent history (last 100-200 years) some for centuries. So if our kids get more enlightened, maybe they will one day make for the great leaders that present day completely lacks. (Side note, about switching places in history - I think Henry VIII and Trump easily could have swapped places and noone would have known the difference ;)
Christopher Bergren
2025-07-19 12:27:17 +0000 UTCAs a note to your comment Mike, that relates to the notion that the faith and history of the winners/conquerors are those retold, remembered and are dominant today. In Sweden our former religion, the old Norse polytheistic religion, Asa belief or Asatru, was banished a thousand years ago. But the belief has always lived on in secrecy and has quite a significant following still today. In fact, the first Asa burialground in a millenia has recently been approved, so sometimes freedom of religion (not only the big ones) prevails. Thanks for a great pod, and all the others you made that steps a bit away from comedy a while and focuses on enlightment. Man do many people today need education and open their eyes a bit wider.
Christopher Bergren
2025-07-19 11:52:43 +0000 UTCThere’s a fantastic YouTuber called Lindsay Holliday tea on history whose knowledge of history is incredible. She has a series where she explains every king and queen of England and Great Britain from the Saxons to the present. Very easy to follow I would highly recommended her channel. She also covers royalty and other time periods of the whole world but a lot of uk history xxx
Katherine with a K
2025-07-19 08:13:55 +0000 UTCI have his audio book and it’s brilliant, intelligent and comical and he has a history degree from Cambridge
Katherine with a K
2025-07-19 07:46:21 +0000 UTCThis was very interesting, that being said you mentioned the show the Tudors, absolutely worth a watch, love that series, so good.
Andrè
2025-07-19 07:21:12 +0000 UTCStay strong and keep positive KB all the best for you and your partner 🙏
Dango247
2025-07-18 23:08:03 +0000 UTCpeep show gunna be great :P
TheHigh
2025-07-18 23:07:49 +0000 UTCDan Snow is married to Lady Edwina Grosvenor. Her father, the Duke of Westminster was one of richest men in Britain at one point. He married well 😅
Danny
2025-07-18 21:49:15 +0000 UTCI had the best history teacher. He taught through fear 😅 he was an alcoholic with the world's shortest fuse and was triggered by EVERYTHING. Hed be learning us about something , crime and punishment for example, and hed just go absolutely insane and start throwing books across the room, throwing chairs ,slamming or kicking the door shut, booting tables, allwhilst going off on tangents about society going to shit now. He was insane . Made you learn though 😅 but people loved him. I filled like 3 books on notes every year. RIP Mr Ferguson
Danny
2025-07-18 21:38:35 +0000 UTCJust wanted to say thank you both for being a very welcome distraction while my partner’s been going through cancer treatment for the past few months, watched at least one of you reactions while waiting for her in her four surgeries and now tonight on the third day of radiotherapy - the laughs and insights are always very much appreciated, keep doing what you do!
Kieran B
2025-07-18 21:37:52 +0000 UTCThe later romantic idea of Arthur is certainly made up, helped on it's way as an extension from the Welsh annals and the collective stories of the bards by the likes of Geoffrey of Monmouth and later Chretien de Troyes who gave it the flavour of the time. Worthy in their own field but not much related to the 'king' that was referred to as Arthur by historians from the seventh Century on. There was certainly a leader in the mid 6thC likely to be of Romano British nobility, not likely to have been in a toga other than formal occasion, who led the British against the Saxon(Germanish) and Angles(Danish-ish) and won decisive victories keeping them at bay for at least a hundred years. Within a hundred years this leader was known throughout the country as 'Arthur' and many place names, particularly in the North are named in his honour. David is a home counties lad, most of them are Anglo/Saxon enthusiasts. The North, less so.
emu cat
2025-07-18 20:54:15 +0000 UTCThis literally made no sense.
Static CentreHalf
2025-07-18 19:43:37 +0000 UTCabsolutely loved this reaction.
Karl Compton
2025-07-18 19:00:36 +0000 UTCDan Snow asked which family to marry in to (best King as a brother-in-law) because that's precisely what he's done.
Static CentreHalf
2025-07-18 18:39:28 +0000 UTCWould be good to see you cover more dan snow history stuff. It has not been overreacted too by other channels also
Aaron ball
2025-07-18 18:38:04 +0000 UTCI wore my fanciest shirt okay! What do you want from me?
RegenerationNationTV
2025-07-18 18:36:36 +0000 UTCI thought that 😂
Kieran B
2025-07-18 18:23:56 +0000 UTCThe is a great pub in Nottingham, built into the sandstone caves beneath the castle, called the Olde Trip to Jerusalem, supposedly because it was a stop of point on the way to the crusades; how true that is is questionable but the castle brewhouse was definitely in those caves at the time. So maybe that was the pub that Richard I found at David’s request… Worth a visit if you make it to the UK
Kieran B
2025-07-18 18:21:18 +0000 UTCFlorida is working in harmony today. At almost the exact same time you dropped this, King Boomer dropped an episode of Wolf Hall, which is about the Tudor period.
Julian
2025-07-18 18:17:12 +0000 UTCMike watch Wolf Hall in your own time, fantastic programme around Henry Vlll and Thomas More
Louise Miller
2025-07-18 18:10:09 +0000 UTCDavid studied history at Cambridge University and the difference with our degrees is that we only study that one subject, nothing else, for 3 years. And we start specialising at 14 for GCSEs to an extent, and then more so at A-Levels (the Inbetweeners) where you only do 3-4 subjects for 2 years - entirely your choice based on what you apply to university to study (rather than picking a major halfway through)
Kieran B
2025-07-18 18:09:28 +0000 UTCI’ve got this book although I haven’t read it yet. I think people like David Mitchell and Stephen Fry have a talent for making subjects accessible. I’ve only become obsessed with history later in life. I had a terrible history teacher at school. I don’t know what the curriculum is like now, but I don’t remember learning anything about kings and queens.
Julian
2025-07-18 18:04:47 +0000 UTCThe American Revolution is one of the most distorted reshapings (and massive oversimplification) of events for various reasons, I’m currently writing an article for the Journal of the American Revolution tentatively called “A Very British Revolution?” that puts it back into the context that it existed in at the time, the Patriots were just as much a product of British ideology, culture, politics and philosophy as the Loyalists - and in many ways more so. But I won’t get on that soapbox now, it’s a fascinating and complex period of history that’s done a disservice by the oversimplifications of the popular narrative. Nowhere near as funny as David’s writing though 😂
Kieran B
2025-07-18 17:58:22 +0000 UTCThere’s a bit of a myth with ages before the 20th century, because huge infant mortality drags the average numbers down sadly - but if you made it out of childhood you had a fair chance of making say 60 or even older, but people see average age of 30 and think that’s the normal lifespan of an adult for the period
Kieran B
2025-07-18 17:42:40 +0000 UTCI'm enjoying that Jess has dressed up a little for this more highbrow content. Mike... hmm.
Static CentreHalf
2025-07-18 17:39:25 +0000 UTCClearly you wrote this with the intention of provoking "why because they're Americans?" so in true QI-claxon-sounding tradition... Why because they're Americans? There. I fell for it.
Static CentreHalf
2025-07-18 17:33:00 +0000 UTCThe book is fantastic, especially if you get the audiobook with David reading. I’m a history obsessive so will always happily watch you react to this stuff 😄 Literally listened to the History Hit podcast earlier. Al’s podcast with James Holland is superb, they do an annual festival for it too - got to help teach Al how to fire WW2 heavy anti aircraft artillery at the first one
Kieran B
2025-07-18 17:24:37 +0000 UTCTyping this pre watch, but History Hit is an enthusiast focused podcast, it'll be interesting to see how this goes. I would completely understand if this goes over you heads as people who don't know the kings and queens. There's many brits who wouldn't know too.
Zr0w3n
2025-07-18 17:22:12 +0000 UTCFair play to you for reacting to this. Must have been a hard graft to get through it as Americans.
James
2025-07-18 17:10:30 +0000 UTC"Unruly" is a superb book. You learn a lot from it and it's also very, very funny. "To make old bones", simply means to live a long time. Which was pretty unusual in the medieval era where the average male lifespan meant that if you got to your late 40s without being killed by violence, disease, famine or sheer over work you were considered ancient. The mortality of those times is staggering. You could expect most of your children to die in infancy (which is why people tended to have a lot), and once you'd reached adulthood there was no guarantee you wouldn't be wiped out before what we'd now consider middle age anyway. Of course some people beat the odds and got to ages we'd consider elderly by today's standards, but they really were exceptions. It's a fascinating era and there are some really good videos I'm sure other people will recommend if you want to learn more about Dark age and medieval history. My favorite historical face from the War of the Roses (one of the British Isle's many, many vicious civil wars and a fascinating subject in itself) is that, it has been argued with some weight by historians that 1% of all Englishmen alive on the day were killed at the Battle of Towton in 1461. Estimates suggest that around 10 to 15 thousand men may have been killed in that one battle. At that time the population of England was reckoned to be about 3 million (of which roughly 50% or more would be women). Leaving 1.5 million men in the country. 15 thousand casualties therefor means 1 in every 100 men in the whole country got snuffed out on one day, in one field. Imagine that scaled up for the US or the UK today. Staggering.
Dryfesands
2025-07-18 16:51:06 +0000 UTCIf you're thinking of doing a little googling to see if this David Mitchell has written any more books be aware that there is a fairly prolific novelist called David Mitchell (wrote Cloud Atlas among many others) which will skew your results 😁
Simon Crockford
2025-07-18 16:46:15 +0000 UTCMade old bones means they lived a long life
Luke Gale9
2025-07-18 16:40:35 +0000 UTCmade old bones...."lived to a good age"
Chris Kay
2025-07-18 16:40:04 +0000 UTCUnruly is a great book, it really brings that period to life. The audio book narrated by David adds that extra spice!
Emily
2025-07-18 16:20:36 +0000 UTCJust to be clear. Merlin the BBC series is one of my favourite shows!! I know you're unlikely to ever react to it, but just watch it for yourselves... superb!!
Paul08031977
2025-07-18 16:18:53 +0000 UTCUnruly is a wonderfully irreverent history book. I thoroughly recommend the audio book as David narrates it too.
Jamie Macdonald
2025-07-18 16:07:31 +0000 UTC
