• Complain

Robert Easton - The Good, the Bad And the Unready: the Remarkable Truth Behind Historys Strangest Nicknames

Here you can read online Robert Easton - The Good, the Bad And the Unready: the Remarkable Truth Behind Historys Strangest Nicknames full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 2008, publisher: Penguin, genre: History. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

No cover
  • Book:
    The Good, the Bad And the Unready: the Remarkable Truth Behind Historys Strangest Nicknames
  • Author:
  • Publisher:
    Penguin
  • Genre:
  • Year:
    2008
  • Rating:
    4 / 5
  • Favourites:
    Add to favourites
  • Your mark:
    • 80
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

The Good, the Bad And the Unready: the Remarkable Truth Behind Historys Strangest Nicknames: summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "The Good, the Bad And the Unready: the Remarkable Truth Behind Historys Strangest Nicknames" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

Robert Easton: author's other books


Who wrote The Good, the Bad And the Unready: the Remarkable Truth Behind Historys Strangest Nicknames? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

The Good, the Bad And the Unready: the Remarkable Truth Behind Historys Strangest Nicknames — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "The Good, the Bad And the Unready: the Remarkable Truth Behind Historys Strangest Nicknames" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make
The GOOD, the BAD
and the UNREADY

The Good, the Bad and the Unready is a hugely entertaining and highly original investigation into the vainglorious, unfortunate and sometimes downright insulting names that pepper the history books, from Brandy Nan to Fulk the Surly, and from Hugh the Dull to Magnus Barelegs. Anyone with a love of the quirky side of history will enjoy the capricious world of noble nicknames, where military tacticians can be celebrated for their drinking habits (Michael the Drunkard), successful diplomats can be mocked for their diminutive stature (Ladislaus the Elbow-High), and a vicious tyrant can be kowtowed to (John the Good).

Revd Robert Easton (childhood nickname Ridiculous Robert) has spent years gathering together the best and worst nicknames given to the rich and powerful over the centuries, and The Good, the Bad and the Unready is the result: a uniquely irreverent look at both history and the inventiveness of the English language.

Charles the Silly and Wenceslas the Worthless at Rheims in 1398 The GOOD the - photo 1

Charles the Silly and Wenceslas the Worthless
at Rheims in 1398.

The GOOD, the BAD
and the UNREADY

[ The Curious Stories Behind Noble Nicknames ]

REVD ROBERT EASTON

Picture 2
PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL , England
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3
(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland
(a division of Penguin Books Ltd)
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)
Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi 110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand
(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL , England

www.penguin.com

First published in hardback as Fat, Bald and Worthless 2006
Published in paperback as The Good, the Bad and the Unready 2008
1

Copyright Revd Robert Easton, 2006
All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject
to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers
prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in
which it is published and without a similar condition including this
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

9780141903590

To

Harry the Dirty Dog

Contents
Preface

I was in the British Library last year searching for material on Charles III, the sixteenth-century duke of Lorraine, and on the reason for his nickname the Great. The catalogue revealed the existence of a work with the promising title The House of Lorraine by one Rachel Lindsay, and so I ordered it from the stacks, only to find it was a Mills and Boon romance set in Paris. Held close in his arms, her head against his breast, began the last paragraph, Nicole no longer felt any anger against him everything that had happened in the past was suddenly of no importance. While Lindsays House of Lorraine might not be the best source of information on Charles III, and the heroines easy dismissal of the past might be a little over the top, her words were a healthy reminder that, as The Good, the Bad and the Unready demonstrates, recorded history is a veritable minefield of contradictions and injustices.

How cruel of history, for example, to give the well-meaning if naive Anne Boleyn the perpetual moniker the Great Whore. How unjust of it to label for eternity the magnificent Charles II of France not for his devotion to Church and nation but as the Bald, for his supposed lack of hair. How kind, on the other hand, has nickname history been to others. Take for example the repulsive king Edward II of England, who, given his spoilt childhood, his callous and cruel indifference to all his subjects (including his wife), and his woefully inept military strategy, was perhaps one of the most embarrassing monarchs in English history. That he is known as Edward Carnarvon, referring to the castle where he was born, rather than Edward the Atrocious or Edward the Vile, is surely a travesty of nickname justice.

But thats the point. There is no justice in nicknames. Sometimes they are conferred upon an individual on a whim, sometimes after considerable reflection. Sometimes they are bestowed sarcastically; sometimes they couldnt be more serious. A person may be known for a physical attribute over which they have no control, or for an act of cruelty or generosity entirely of their own making. Nicknames. We all have them, whether we know it or not, and more to the point, whether we like it or not.

The English essayist William Hazlitt observed that a nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man. Archibald the Loser and Hugh the Dull would surely concur. John the Perfect, on the other hand, might disagree. Thomas Haliburton, the nineteenth-century humorist, meanwhile, noted that nicknames stick to people, and the most ridiculous are the most adhesive. Elizabeth the Red-Nosed Princess and Wilfrid the Shaggy would probably nod their heads in agreement.

And yet I would suggest that nicknames (bynames, soubriquets, cognomens, monikers or epithets while they all mean slightly different things, they are used for the most part interchangeably) should not be disregarded as mere onomastic trivialities, but celebrated as adding colourful detail to history history that can so often be presented as bland and dull. The first three kings of Portugal, in many history books, are listed as

Alfonso I

|

Sancho I

|

Alfonso II

when they could be referred to as:

Alfonso the Conqueror

|

Sancho the Settler

|

Alfonso the Fat

This book pays homage to the humble yet capricious nickname. It champions and delights in a system of nomenclature that pays no heed to social status nor indeed to historical accuracy. It rejoices in a world where monarchs do not have numerals after their names but appellations such as Bald or Worthless, and where nobles are prominent not for their military genius or diplomatic success but for their moral fibre or the size of their nose.

While the word nickname itself (deriving from eke name, meaning also name or additional name) is only a few hundred years old, nicknames themselves are as old as the hills or at least as old as the time since people have occupied hills. For nicknames have been around for as long as people have wanted to find an affectionate, familiar or spiteful way of describing each other. Before the fourteenth century, hereditary surnames were extremely rare and so people used soubriquets and epithets to tell people of the same name apart. In Viking culture, men called Einar were two a penny; only one as far as we know rejoiced in the intriguing extra name of Buttered Bread. The eleventh-century Domesday Book often singled people out by profession or, as in the case of Roger God Save the Ladies, by other, less specific qualities.

Next page
Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «The Good, the Bad And the Unready: the Remarkable Truth Behind Historys Strangest Nicknames»

Look at similar books to The Good, the Bad And the Unready: the Remarkable Truth Behind Historys Strangest Nicknames. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


Reviews about «The Good, the Bad And the Unready: the Remarkable Truth Behind Historys Strangest Nicknames»

Discussion, reviews of the book The Good, the Bad And the Unready: the Remarkable Truth Behind Historys Strangest Nicknames and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.