In fact, it’s very like having your brain hijacked by Sellar and Yeatman. Most of the information is in there somewhere, but it’s all washing around like noodles in minestrone.

James III? Was he the one that was blown up by his own cannon? The one who was murdered in the sewer? Or the one that fell off a cliff en route to his pulchritudinous new wife? Or was THAT one of the Alexanders – the one who died inconveniently and started all the bloodletting over the Scottish succession? It doesn’t help, of course, that there are so many Scottish kings called James – most of whom came to Bad Ends. The main problem with this technique is that sometimes (all right – quite often) the information ends up in the wrong place, the wrong way up and attached to the wrong people, whose names I can only half remember. I have a fairly absorbent brain, and find that if I read around a subject enough, scribbling notes as I go, the salient points eventually sink in via some form of osmosis without me having to make too much of an effort to remember them. (Much to the startlement of my two Jack Russells, I also took to waving my arms around, vaguely indicating non-existent portraits of Pompous Men in Wigs.) They’re both subjects I know something about, but only in a fairly superficial way, so I spent the week before the interview speed-reading as many books on Scottish history as I could, and prowling around the house declaiming loudly about Edward Longshanks, Robert the Bruce, The Duke of Queensberry and the Black Douglas. I recently went for my first job interview in over a quarter of a century – for a position as tour guide at a local stately heap.* The job advert said the ideal candidate would need a knowledge of Scottish history and – preferably but not essentially – Renaissance art.

1066 And All That by W C Sellar and R J Yeatman

Wc sellar and rj yeatman