Unruly: In Conversation with David Mitchell

Join BAFTA Award-winning actor, writer, and comedian David Mitchell as he discusses his new book, Unruly.

Think you know the Kings and Queens of England? Think again.

In Unruly, David Mitchell explores how early England's monarchs, while acting as feared rulers firmly guiding their subjects' destinies, were in reality a bunch of lucky sods who were mostly as silly and weird in real life as they appear to us today in their portraits.

Taking us right back to King Arthur (spoiler: he didn't exist), David tells the founding story of post-Roman England right up to the reign of Elizabeth I (spoiler: she dies). It's a tale of narcissists, inadequate self-control, excessive beheadings, middle-management insurrection, uncivil wars, and at least one total Cnut, as the English evolved from having their crops nicked by the thug with the largest armed gang to bowing and paying taxes to a divinely anointed King.

How this happened, who it happened to and why the hell it matters in twenty-first-century Britain are all questions David answers with brilliance, wit and the full erudition of a man who once studied history - and is damned if he'll let it off the hook for the mess it's made of everything.

Featuring

David Mitchell

David Mitchell is a comedian, actor, writer and the polysyllabic member of Mitchell and Webb. He has won BAFTAs for Peep Show and That Mitchell and Webb Look. Mitchell is a frequent participant on British panel shows, being a team captain on Would I Lie to You?, and the former host of The Bubble and Was It Something I Said?, as well as a frequent guest on other panel shows, including QI, The Big Fat Quiz of the Year, Mock the Week, 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown and Have I Got News for You. He studied Modern History at Cambridge which is where he began performing with the Cambridge Footlights of which he became president between 1995 and 1996. Mitchell met Robert Webb during rehearsals for a Footlights production of Cinderella in 1993, and they quickly established a comedy partnership soon after.

See David Mitchell tour dates

•  > New Theatre Oxford