Review of ‘The Rest is History’ — an intriguing insight into the past

The Rest is History
Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook
Bloomsbury

Subtitled History’s Most Curious Questions Answered, this is the book taken from the authors’ hit history podcast series.

History may not be everyone’s favourite school subject, but maybe if it was taught like this, its popularity would soar. The authors are both serious academic historians, with a number of books to their credit, but here and in their podcasts, their approach is to make history fun — and fascinating.

It is a book to dip into rather than to sit down and read from cover to cover. Some of the stories may be faintly familiar (though their telling will be different) but some will decidedly not be what you learnt at school. You can read about the Prussian general who died dancing in a ballerina’s pink tutu, discover the top 10 eunuchs in history, or the top 10 mistresses, check who beat whom at the British Prime Ministers’ World Cup and find out about 17th century midwifery, which was something to be avoided.

There are some fascinating gems to be unearthed: Julius Caesar used homing pigeons to send messages to his army — presumably in Latin. The birds have been used in warfare ever since, and, according to The Rest is History, the Chinese are training 10,000 pigeons in case a cyber attack takes out their communications. Apparently the best pigeons have a range of more than over 600 miles, and Holland and Sandbrook point out that this is 25 times further than Elon Musk’s Space X rocket has managed so far.

Inevitably, in a book of this kind, some of the chapters work better than others. For me, the funniest is the authors’ take on Dan Brown’s bestseller, The Da Vinci Code. They pull no punches as they investigate Brown’s claim that 99% of the history in his book is true — and they do it in Brown’s exceedingly convoluted literary style. They start off by saying that The Da Vinci Code has been translated into 44 languages “although not, sadly, into English”. Brown presumably made a lot more money out of his book than Holland and Sandbrook are likely to make from theirs, but he might not be too happy with their take on it.

The Rest is History is a hugely entertaining read, bringing into the light of day some of the most obscure events of the past and offering a genuinely different take on well-known ones. The style is conversational, showing its podcast roots, and the whole enterprise is great fun.