Losing tip no. 16: 1066 and all that

• Author: The Honourable Marvin Catzman
• Pages: 223-227

223

g March 2005

Lsing tip n. 16:

1066 AND ALL THAT

THE HONOURABLE MARVIN CATZMAN

When we were in high school, our history teacher made

us read 1066 And All That.1 Although a small book, it was

majestically subtitled “A Memorable History of England,

comprising all the parts you can remember, including 103 Good Things,

5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates.”

One of the “2 Genuine Dates” was 1066.2 That was the year William

the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, invaded and conquered England.3

At the Battle of Hastings, a Norman arrow mortally wounded the Anglo-

Saxon King Harold, and the English language proceeded o in a whole

new direction.4 For one of the principal consequences of the Norman

1 Walter C. Sellar and Robert J. Yeatman, 1066 And All That (London: Methuen, 1931).

2 The other was 55 .., when Julius Caesar landed at the Isle of Thanet with ten

thousand of his closest friends. The Romans hung around, o and on, until the

.. 400s, speaking a lot of Latin so that the locals wouldn’t understand what they

were saying. But the locals outsmarted them and learned a little Latin without let-

ting on: see note 6.

3 Hence the name “William the Conqueror.” Some people called King Harold

“Harold the Conqueree” for a while, but the name never stuck.

4 This is what our high school English teacher called a “cat-and-dog” sent ence, the

rst half of which appears to have nothing to do with the second half. But then

again, we always liked history more than we liked English: see note 12.