Author(s): Sarah Burton

Gift & Humour

When his teacher sets the class a History project, Sam cannot decide which bit of History he prefers, so decides to do All Of It. His version of History is a rumbustious collection of half-remembered facts, assembled roughly in the right order, and glued together with alarmingly confident misunderstanding. And yet, in his hastily reeled-off accounts, this unreliable narrator somehow inadvertently gets to the heart of the matter, as when he sagely observes that in the end the Suffragettes' hunger striking paid off 'in the name of Female Emaciation, which has continued to this day', or in his explosion of the 'suppository that Shakespeare's plays were written by someone else of the same name'. This is a delightful cross between 1066 And All That and the National Theatre of Brent's All The World's A Globe narrated by a bright nine-year-old whose enthusiasm for the subject vastly outweighs his knowledge...