History and Memory: 1066 and All That

History is not what we remember about the past. Some of us remember a lot. Some of us remember a little. Much if not most of what we remember is wrong. In 1930, WC Sellar and R J Yeatman published 1066 and All That: A Memorable History of England. It was not in fact a history, but a satire on the teaching and learning of history in English schools. The book debunked British greatness. It was marked by the cynicism of post-World War I culture. In the introduction, the authors stated that the book contained "all the history you can remember." It was patronising, of course, but not wildly off the mark.

For example, they stated that the national history contained only two memorable dates, 55 BC, that marked the first arrival of the Romans under Julius Caesar, and 1066, the Norman Conquest. In between was a series of "Waves," of Germanic tribes, Vikings, and so on. In the book, Anglo-Saxon kings became a Wave of Egg Kings, Egbred, Egbreth, Egfilth, and so on. The Industrial Revolution became the Industrial Revelation, when all the employers in England discovered that small children could work twelve hours a day, six days a week on almost no food. 

The book was short and silly, but it made a valid point about historical memory: how people remember history is often far from the reality of what actually happened. 1066 and All That stops at the end of the First World War, after which America replaced England as "top nation" and history came to an end. We could wish. 

We are now living through the Era of America as Top Nation, but a top nation in rapid decline. We have a "president" whose historical memory is distorted beyond anything Sellars and Yeatman could have imagined. Trump makes history up as he goes along, and is followers have the memory of fleas. They never question his pronouncements. Maybe it's time for a new version of the Sellars and Yeatman book, about what Americans remember of their history in 2026, especially MAGAts.