Pod Insights The Rest Is History 678. Britain: God Save the King (Part 2) About this episode How did the Napoleonic Wars contribute to the enshrinement of the British national anthem? What are the Jacobite origins of this legendary melody? And, which British monarch was it written for?
Join Tom and Dominic as they discuss the creation of Britain’s legendary national anthem, God Save the King, and its mysterious composer.
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Transcript 11,878 words · 7 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Dominic Sandbrook? This episode is brought to you by Lloyds Business and Commercial Banking.
0:05 Tom Holland? One of the great things about finance is that it may result in you having to pay tax and this was a constant grumble in Anglo-Saxon England, which was the most heavily taxed country in the whole of Christendom. And just when the Anglo-Saxons thought it couldn't get any worse, they got conquered by King Canute and Canute imposed a tax rate that was effectively 100%.
0:33 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, well, that was one very big change, Tom, but another tax change is upon us. And this is the advent of Making Tax Digital for Income Tax. And if you're at all concerned about it, this is where Lloyds come in because they're here to help make that change much simpler for you with a useful HMRC recognised accounting tool that will help you stay in line with all the Making Tax Digital requirements.
0:59 Tom Holland? And the brilliant thing about this is that it is free for Lloyds Business Account customers. So when it is time to digitise your income tax, you can bank on Lloyds. Search Lloyds Business Accounts to find out more.
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4:05 Dominic Sandbrook? So that is the stirring song that England's finest will be belting out next week when we meet Croatia for the first match in our ultimately victorious 2026 World Cup campaign. So the campaign that will go down in history, seeing Thomas Tuchel rewarded with a knighthood. Harry Kane, hat trick in the final, all very exciting. So hello everybody, welcome to the second in our World Cup themed series about the history behind the national anthems of the most interesting contenders. I was about to say the top contenders, but I don't think South Africa are a top contender, but they're the most interesting. Now, obviously,
4:47 Dominic Sandbrook? Tom, we were always going to do God Save the King because we are of course a patriotic podcast, but also because this is a brilliant example of how a very familiar anthem can open up this window into a very interesting area of history. Specifically in this case, a period of history we haven't done as much of on this show as we should have done, which is the 18th century. So we'll be talking a lot about the politics of the 18th century, but before then, just on the anthem itself, I think very unfairly, people often diss this anthem and they say it's a bit, I think because it's often played badly by the
5:21 Tom Holland? A dirge.
5:21 Dominic Sandbrook? They say it's a dirge.
5:22 Tom Holland? A dirge. It's, I think it's a legal requirement to say that it is a dirge.
5:27 Dominic Sandbrook? I don't think it is a dirge, but there you go.
5:29 Tom Holland? Well, I'm quite fond of it as well, I have to say, but I would, I mean, maybe you would disagree. I don't think it has the kind of operatic power.
5:39 Dominic Sandbrook? Strutting, bombastic.
5:41 Tom Holland? So we've done two national anthems before this. One was the previous one, the Star Spangled Banner.
5:47 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
5:48 Tom Holland? Burning the White House, attacking Baltimore, all of that. But before that, as part of our French Revolution series, we did the Marseillaise, episode 507, for people who haven't heard it. Now, I know that you disagree on this. I think it is a thrilling national anthem. I'm a little bit envious of it. And just to remind people, the background to the Marseillaise, written in 1792, as the infant French Republic was seriously facing the prospect of being strangled in its cradle by the invading armies of Austria and Prussia. And this invasion was the opening shot in a war that Britain was going to enter very
6:26 Tom Holland? soon afterwards, following the execution of Louis XVI. And for both the American and the French revolutionaries, Britain Really constitutes the great rival, the great opponent to their respective revolutions. And the consequence of this is decades of conflict. So with the Americans, they're at war for eight years through the War of Independence. Their republic would not have been established without that war. And the French, what begins as a revolutionary war will end up, the Napoleonic wars and go on all the way from seventeen ninety three through to eighteen fifteen, kind of on and off. And of course, this isn't just a military or naval conflict.
7:09 Tom Holland? It is an ideological one because both the American and the French revolutions establish republics. And those republics proselytize a kind of militant repudiation of monarchy. And Britain is the monarchy par excellence.
7:26 Dominic Sandbrook? But the way that ideological conflicts work, it's a ratchet effect, isn't it? So the more radical one side becomes, the more the other side doubles down on its previous ideological commitments. And that's true of British monarchism, isn't it? That people more and more come to see the British monarchy, not just as part of the furniture.
7:43 Tom Holland? Yeah.
7:44 Dominic Sandbrook? But the more that tax evaders in the United States and Jacobins in France rail against the principle of monarchy. The more that the Edmund Berks of this world come to construct a kind of ideological defense of it and to actually see monarchy, not just as something they've inherited, but as an intrinsically good and worthwhile thing in itself.
8:04 Tom Holland? Or the Jack Aubries, played by Russell Crowe. Do you want to see a guillotine in Piccadilly?
8:11 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes.
8:12 Tom Holland? Absolutely. The more that the French, for instance, go on about their republic, the more the British cling to the ideal of monarchy. The figure of George the Third as, you know, Farmer George, a kind of homely, lovable figure, as opposed to the menacing figure of Robespierre or Napoleon. And of course, with the French Revolution, you also get the whole closing down churches and turning Notre Dame into a temple of reason kind of thing. And Britain is a very God fearing country in this period. So people like Nelson, absolutely appalled by. What they see as this kind of atheistic state that has emerged across the channel. And it confirms them in their opinion that they are fighting people who have absolutely
8:57 Tom Holland? terrible opinions. They're anti-monarchy, they're anti-Christianity.
9:01 Dominic Sandbrook? Hmm.
9:01 Tom Holland? And because of that, the inevitable corollary is that God must be on Britain's side. And if that is the case, then why shouldn't he save the king?
9:11 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
9:11 Tom Holland? It seems perfectly reasonable to ask God to save the king. And I think that particularly during the Napoleonic Wars, where it's a life or death struggle for Britain, this request to God to save the British king, it's not an idle formula. I mean, it is a really kind of desperately heartfelt prayer, I think. Would you agree with that?
9:31 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, I mean, if you're sailing to action at Trafalgar or something, you believe that you are on the side of what is right, that God is with you.
9:39 Tom Holland? Yeah.
9:40 Dominic Sandbrook? That Britain is defending God's cause against these atheistical Frenchmen or their corrupt usurping tyrant, the Corsican monster. So yeah, absolutely. I think people take it really seriously. And the Jack Aubrey character is, well, or Nelson. I mean, they're brilliant examples of that.
9:56 Tom Holland? Yeah. And so the God aspect of the God save the king is important. And this is something that I hadn't really appreciated until I started looking into the backstory of God save the king. It is in this period, the Napoleonic Wars, that God save the king is enshrined as the national anthem. And I'm putting the emphasis there on the word anthem. And I think we're so used to that as a phrase today, that it's very easy to forget what anthem originally meant, which is essentially a kind of a musical setting for a religious text. And again, the context for why it matters that the God save the king is an anthem is the fact that Britain sees itself at being at war with a militantly atheist rival. And
10:41 Tom Holland? this atheism for the British is focused by the fact that On the fourteenth of July seventeen ninety five, the Marseillaise is officially enshrined France's Chant National, so the national song. And the British respond to that by terming God Save the King an anthem. So they are effectively sacralizing the idea of a national song. They are explicitly Christianizing it. And this formulation, I'm glad to say, is so influential that by the end of the nineteenth century, so in eighteen seventy nine, even the French succumb. And the Marseillaise is retrospectively titled by the French, a national hymn rather than a national song.
11:26 Dominic Sandbrook? Can I ask a question about, you say, you know, it's this point that it becomes enshrined as the country's anthem, but it's enshrined by convention rather than by parliamentary statute or something?
11:38 Tom Holland? Yeah, it's increasingly called an anthem. It's something that people sing as a Christian, as well as a kind of patriotic duty.
11:46 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, doesn't that sort of fit the idea of the, that the British have for themselves, that their constitution is made up of practices that have evolved over long periods of time organically, like a tree, rather than being artificially created in a lab, like the bonkers experiments of the United States and France?
12:03 Tom Holland? Yeah, because both the Star Spangled Banner, even though that obviously becomes a national anthem much later, but it is written during a period of war with Britain, as is, you know, the Marseillaise just precedes the war with Britain. They're both songs that are appropriate to self-consciously revolutionary states, republics which have eliminated a monarchy and all the kind of traditions that are associated with a monarchy. And therefore, both the American and the French revolutionary states have to draw up constitutions from scratch, and they are incredibly famous aspects of the republics that get established in America and France respectively. Whereas Britain, by contrast, has, has kept its monarchy and its constitution is unwritten.
12:47 Tom Holland? And this is a cause of great pride to the British. They don't need kind of new-fangled constitutions, because their constitution stretches back over the centuries, ultimately all the way back to the Anglo-Saxons. And the constitution has evolved over time in kind of fits and starts. And God Save the King as an anthem is perfectly suited to such a state, because God Save the King, unlike the Marseillaise, unlike the Star Spangled Banner. Was not written in response to a specific occasion. So, you know, an attack or naval assault or anything like that.
13:23 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
13:23 Tom Holland? Instead, no one is really sure where it came from. I think by the Napoleonic period, people don't know who'd written it. They don't know when it had been written it. They don't even really know why it had been written. But like the constitution, it just exists.
13:40 Dominic Sandbrook? But there are various theories where it's come from, of course, and we'll be delving into some of them. But just to give people a sense, there's still no really definitive answer to some of those questions, is there?
13:51 Tom Holland? Well, we will come to this, but you're right that in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, the establishment of God Save the King as a national anthem in Britain. Obviously, British historians are really intrigued to try and work out where it might have come from. And I think particularly who might have composed it. And they want to have a composer who is of sufficient status that it's, you know, it's a properly national composer. So one very popular theory in the Victorian period is that God Save the King was written by Henry Purcell, who the great 17th century composer.
14:25 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
14:26 Tom Holland? Probably the greatest English composer. I mean, it's not saying much, I guess.
14:30 Dominic Sandbrook? Dido and Aeneas.
14:31 Tom Holland? Dido and Aeneas, the first great opera written in English. I mean, you know, he's capable of writing all kinds of different music. And he does have the status as the great English composer. You can see why people might have wanted him to have composed God Save the King. There's another very popular candidate who's earlier than Purcell, a century earlier, so in the 16th century. And this was a keyboard virtuoso who had the unimprovable name of John Bull.
15:02 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, he couldn't make this up.
15:04 Tom Holland? He, I mean, he did compose a melody that, I mean, if you, I guess if you're kind of half deaf, it vaguely resembles God Save the King. But I think the reason that people are so keen on having John Bull as the composer of God Save the King is his name, because John Bull, you know, it's the, it's the figure of Britain, isn't it?
15:23 Dominic Sandbrook? It is indeed.
15:24 Tom Holland? The fact that he is an Elizabethan, and so that is to push the origins of the National Anthem back to the age of Francis Drake and William Shakespeare, you know, the great golden age of of England. And in nineteen thirty seven, a Welshman.
15:38 Dominic Sandbrook? Great to have a Welshman on the show.
15:39 Tom Holland? Yeah, great to have a Welshman, a musicologist called Le Henry. He proposed that God save, would it be God save the Queen then? That it had been composed on the direct command of Elizabeth the first in fifteen eighty eight to celebrate the defeat of the Armada.
15:56 Dominic Sandbrook? Oh, I love that.
15:57 Tom Holland? Well, sadly, there is absolutely zero evidence for this, and it has to be said that Le Henry is a faintly sinister figure and an implausible figure. So he was a Druid, I mean, that's not to cast aspersions on Druids, but Druids are basically invented in the nineteenth century. So that would imply an enthusiasm for bogus history.
16:17 Dominic Sandbrook? Right, he's no stranger to contrivances.
16:19 Tom Holland? No, he was also a bigamist, so I think maybe not necessarily to be trusted. On top of that, he was also a notorious pro-Nazi and got locked up in nineteen forty as a security threat. So I think Le Henry isn't entirely trustworthy as a musicologist.
16:37 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah. Do you have another musicologist in the wings?
16:39 Tom Holland? I do.
16:40 Dominic Sandbrook? Fortunately, perhaps with a very different ideological leanings, who may be able to resolve this murky question for us.
16:47 Tom Holland? I do, Dominic, and this is a guy called Percy A. Scholes. Now, on one level, he is very much not a Sandbrookian figure. So he was vice president of the Vegetarian Society, and there was nothing he enjoyed of an evening than a delicious slap up dinner containing a couple of carrots. So that was what he would be served with. So he's incredibly thin and spindly.
17:12 Dominic Sandbrook? He would be unwelcome to get together with our producers at Wilton's in Mayfair.
17:16 Tom Holland? Yes, he would. He absolutely would. On the other hand, he is a man who has no time for kind of canting academics. He's always been fabulously rude about academics he doesn't respect in reviews. And I think there's a slight quality of Sandbrook about that.
17:31 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
17:31 Tom Holland? And he definitely loved Britain as well.
17:33 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, he ticks some boxes but not others.
17:35 Tom Holland? Yeah.
17:36 Dominic Sandbrook? We wouldn't have lunch together, that's for sure.
17:38 Tom Holland? So in nineteen forty two, obviously Britain fighting the war against Nazis and all of that. He published a book on God Save the King. And you can see, you know, the, the, the kind of the mood of national beleagrement, why he would be interested in that.
17:53 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
17:54 Tom Holland? This book is clearly inspired by this kind of general mood of patriotism, but I think also with impatience with kind of clowns, sinister clowns like Lee Henry. So he wrote in the introduction to this book, "Few subjects have been discussed with such general irresponsibility, statements that have no rational foundation, whatever, being seriously repeated on every occasion when the subject is brought forward and gaining credence by mere force of repetition."
18:21 Dominic Sandbrook? Okay, so what does he think?
18:23 Tom Holland? His conclusions are essentially, I think, today, accepted, as far as I can tell, by musicologists as being pretty conclusive. So first of all, he nails down the precise point at which the song goes viral. And this is in the autumn of 1745. And 1745 is one of the most dramatic years in the whole of 18th century British history. Because on the 23rd of July, 1745, Prince Charles Edward Stuart, who is better known as Bonnie Prince Charlie, had landed on an island off the west coast of the Scottish Highlands. So Bonnie Prince Charlie was the grandson of James VII of Scotland,
19:08 Tom Holland? who was also James II of England. And back in 1688, in what the British came to call the Glorious Revolution, he had been forced into exile essentially for being too Catholic, too absolutist, too keen to model himself on the example of the Sun King, the kind of the great French absolutist king.
19:29 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
19:30 Tom Holland? And Bonnie Prince Charlie's aim in landing in the Highlands was to claim the British throne back for the Stuarts, the, the line of James II, for his father, the old pretender. And to achieve this, Bonnie Prince Charlie needs to claim the throne back for the Stuarts from the dynasty that has replaced the Stuarts. And this is the House of Hanover.
19:55 Dominic Sandbrook? Hmm.
19:55 Tom Holland? And specifically, it is one of the many Georges that reign in the 18th century, and this is George the Second. George the Second is the king of Great Britain. He is also the elector of Hanover. So he's a German, but more saliently from the point of view of the British elites, he is a Protestant. Whereas the Stuarts are Catholic. And so at stake in the autumn of 1745, when Bonnie Prince Charlie is is has landed in Scotland and is preparing an army to attack the Hanoverian monarchy, you've got two rival versions of monarchy. And the first is the Stuart vision of monarchy.
20:32 Tom Holland? The Stuarts claim they are the rightful ruling dynasty because their legitimacy derives from God and from heredity. So they are descended from Mary Queen of Scots, and before that, the line of the Stuarts, reaching back all the way into the Middle Ages. And essentially, you may not like their their religion, you may not like their absolutist trends, but God has decreed that they should be king, and you can't just kind of sack them because you don't like that. And this is the view of lots of people still in Britain, and we have actually done a series about one of those people already this year. And that is Samuel Johnson.
21:05 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, it's the Tory tradition.
21:06 Tom Holland? Tory traditions, James Boswell as well, his belgographer, both of them were were Jacobites. So Jacobites named after Jacobus, the Latin for for James. But then the other view of monarchy is the Hanoverian one. The supporters of the Hanoverian monarchy, George the Second. They say, well, the Hanoverians are the rightful ruling dynasty of Britain because their legitimacy derives less from heredity than from an act of parliament. And that is to transform the crown not into an inheritance that derives from divine right, you know, the favor of God or whatever. But it's it's specifically a gift of parliament. And Britain is a Protestant country, and therefore it needs a Protestant king.
21:51 Tom Holland? And those are the two visions of monarchy that have kind of been brought together in 1745. So the nature and character of monarchy in Britain is a massively live issue, and it's threatening a civil war.
22:03 Dominic Sandbrook? But one vision is seen as more modern and is more widely accepted in the prosperous kind of south of Great Britain, isn't it? And that is the Hanoverian model, what you might call the Whig model, the idea that the crown gets its legitimacy from Parliament. But that's not the case on the periphery in the wilder parts, which is precisely why Bonnie Prince Charlie has headed for the Highlands of Scotland.
22:28 Tom Holland? Yes, where actually he does tremendously well because the clans there kind of flock to his cause and his banner. And by the autumn of seventeen forty five, Bonnie Prince Charlie seems to have the whole of Scotland at his feet. So he's captured Edinburgh, he's defeated a Hanoverian army at a place called Preston Pans, about ten miles outside Edinburgh, and he is preparing to invade England. And the news of this has reached London, which is a city overwhelmingly loyal to the Hanoverian settlement. And there is massive panic. There are kind of runs on banks. There are loads of caricatures showing terrifying Scotsmen
23:09 Tom Holland? in kilts, kind of advancing on London, you know, absolute mood of trauma. But this trauma generates kind of immense effusions of pro Hanoverian sentiment. They're kind of rallying to the Hanoverian flag. And it is this kind of mood of pro Hanoverian mingled panic and enthusiasm that Percy Sculls, in his book on God Save the King, demonstrated was when God Save the King first kind of erupts onto the national stage. And when I say national stage, I kind of mean it literally, because it makes its debut as a kind of great national
23:50 Tom Holland? song at a theatre, Dominic, where we have done a show.
23:55 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, no less. So one of my very favourite theatres. And we can date this precisely, can't we, to
24:03 Tom Holland? We can.
24:03 Dominic Sandbrook? Is it September, September seventeen forty five?
24:06 Tom Holland? Twenty eighth of September seventeen forty five, and an announcement appeared in the general advertiser, and I will read it. We hear, Mr Lacy, master of His Majesty's company of comedians at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, has applied for leave to raise two hundred men in defence of His Majesty's person and government, in which the whole company of players are willing to engage. So that is They are rallying to the defence of George the Second.
24:30 Dominic Sandbrook? Right.
24:31 Tom Holland? And that same evening, at the Theatre Royal, they're staging a performance of Ben Johnson's comedy, The Alchemist. And everyone sits in the audience and watches it and it ends, lots of applause, the curtain comes down. And then before people can leave their seats in Theatre Royal, the curtain goes back up. It kind of rises unexpectedly. And we are told by another newspaper, the Daily Advertiser, what happens next. The audience were agreeably surprised by the gentleman belonging to that house, performing the anthem of God Save Our Noble King. The universal applause it met with, being enchained with repeated hussars, we love a hussar. Sufficiently denoted in how just an abhorrents they hold the arbitrary schemes of our invidious enemies.
25:15 Tom Holland? And detest the despotic attempts of papal power. So what you've got in this scene is actors who have volunteered to defend King George. And Protestant freedom against the designs of the Stuarts in the form of Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Pope. Menacing Highlanders in kilts, all these kind of terrifying enemies. They're standing there on the stage in London's preeminent theatre. And they are singing this incredibly patriotic song. And obviously, if you are a fan of the Hanoverian settlement, as everyone is in this theatre, I mean, this is absolute catnip. You couldn't be happier about it.
25:54 Dominic Sandbrook? You know, we've got a lot of listeners who are actors themselves. So the actor Samuel West is a listener to this. And I would, I would pay good money to see him standing on stage, belting out, God save.
26:06 Tom Holland? Save the king, having recruited all his mates to join in.
26:10 Dominic Sandbrook? To fight for the king against Britain's enemies. I would pay enormous sums of money to see him doing that.
26:16 Tom Holland? And they keep doing this night after night.
26:18 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
26:18 Tom Holland? And it generates massive enthusiasm among the theatre-going public of London. And it starts to spread. So by the 10th of October, the great rival of the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, which is the theatre in Covent Garden. They start singing God Save the King. You know, if you can't beat them, join them.
26:35 Dominic Sandbrook? It's gone viral.
26:36 Tom Holland? And it starts to spread out into the provinces. So by the 4th of November, this new craze for singing God Save the King. Has reached Bath. We have reports. And by the end of the following year, so by which point Bonnie Prince Charlie has launched his abortive invasion of England, he's turned back at Derby, he's been defeated at the Battle of Culloden, he has fled Scotland forever disguised as a maid. This song is being heard everywhere and I think it's no exaggeration to call it, you know, the first pop song.
27:09 Dominic Sandbrook? The first pop song.
27:10 Tom Holland? It is sung everywhere in a way that I think songs had not previously been.
27:14 Dominic Sandbrook? Okay.
27:15 Tom Holland? It is easily the most effective piece of propaganda in the whole story of the Jacobite invasion. You know, it's a massive kind of popular triumph of pro Hanoverian sentiment. And so obviously George the Second thinks this is great, I'm suddenly the star of a pop song. I mean, what's not to like?
27:33 Dominic Sandbrook? Who wouldn't like that? But is there perhaps a twist?
27:35 Tom Holland? Of course there is.
27:36 Dominic Sandbrook? Always.
27:37 Tom Holland? This whole kind of emergence of God Save the King as a pro Hanoverian anthem, it is shadowed by a certain irony. Because the 28th of September 1745, when it is sung on the stage of Theatre Royal, that may have been when God Save the King first hits the West End. But as Scholes acknowledges in his book, the song itself is much older. We know when it goes viral, but we still don't know when it was written or who wrote it. So Scholes is very contemptuous of the idea that a single composer, whether it's John Bull, whether it's Henry Busell, whether it's anyone who you can put a name to, that anyone named had written the melody. And he, his argument is that it emerges communally and that its true origins will never be known.
28:22 Tom Holland? And I gather that musicologists today still agree. And just to reiterate, I mean, that is what makes it perfect if you're a fan of the British Constitution, because
28:30 Dominic Sandbrook? It's organic.
28:31 Tom Holland? It's organic. It's kind of risen up from the, the hearts of the people.
28:35 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
28:36 Tom Holland? So that's the tune. What about the words? This is where the irony really kicks in. Because Skoll, in his book, quotes a letter that was written on the 10th of October 1745 to David Garrick, the greatest actor of the day. And in this letter, surprise is expressed by the writer of the letter, the sudden craze for God Save the King. The guy who's writing to Garrick says, "These are the very words and music of an old anthem that was sung in St. James's Chapel for King James II."
29:09 Dominic Sandbrook? What?
29:09 Tom Holland? King James II is the Catholic absoluteest grandfather of Bonnie Prince Charlie. So he is the kind of uber Jacobite. Skoll's quotes, other contemporary letters, other contemporary sources, and these are all making the same claim, that God Save the King had not originally been a Hanoverian song, it had been a Jacobite song. And he has this brilliant phrase, "The British National Anthem is a turncoat. It's gone from being a Jacobite anthem to being a Hanoverian anthem." So absolute scenes.
29:40 Dominic Sandbrook? Anthems are always malleable. So all through these six episodes, we'll be doing stories about anthems that were rewritten.
29:46 Tom Holland? Yeah.
29:46 Dominic Sandbrook? Or reinterpreted. We've already had examples when we did the Star Spangled Banner. But, I mean, one of the things about God Save the King is, I mean, we've already rewritten it ourselves in our own lifetimes, because we switched from God Save the Queen to God Save the King, didn't we?
29:59 Tom Holland? Yeah.
29:59 Dominic Sandbrook? Without even really thinking about it. It's not like somebody told us to do it. It just was a natural thing to do. So because there's no, am I right in saying there's no approved, state sanctioned text?
30:10 Tom Holland? There is no authorized version. So you will find a version on, say, the Royal Family's website.
30:15 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
30:15 Tom Holland? But it's not kind of legally prescribed in the way that the Marseillaise is, or we heard the legislation required to inscribe.
30:23 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes.
30:23 Tom Holland? Star Spangled Banner as the American National Anthem. And because of that, it's always been incredibly easy for people to rewrite. So-
30:32 Tom Holland? Those lines that I quoted from the newspaper report when it was first sung on the stage of Drury Lane in 1745, I mean, they are ambiguous. So just to repeat them, "God save our Lord the King, long live our noble King." I mean, it's not clear which that's referring to. I mean, it could be the Stuart King as well as the Hanoverian King. Actually, if you're not naming the king, if you're not specifying who the king is, it's pretty easy to appropriate it on both sides. That said, what becomes the second verse is clearly, I think, written by Hanoverian supporters. So to remind people, the second verse, "May he defend our laws and ever give us cause to sing with heart
31:14 Tom Holland? and voice, God save the King." That is clearly a celebration of the Hanoverian settlement.
31:20 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, the thing about defending laws is code, isn't it, really?
31:23 Tom Holland? Praising a king who is willing to uphold parliamentary sovereignty.
31:28 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
31:28 Tom Holland? The laws that are issued by Parliament. So it is absolutely not a celebration of, say, the divine right of kings.
31:34 Dominic Sandbrook? That's a nice riposte to people who say they don't like "God save the King" because it implies fealty to an absolute monarch or something like that. It absolutely doesn't. It's a tribute to the constitutional settlement of 1688 to 89. So the king in Parliament.
31:51 Tom Holland? Yeah.
31:51 Dominic Sandbrook? It's pure wiggery. That's what it is.
31:53 Tom Holland? Yeah. Well, not just wiggery. There is scope there even for those who are more radical than the Whigs over the course of the Napoleonic Wars, to feel that, yeah, we can get behind this song as a kind of properly unifying anthem. So obviously, royalists can sing it, but so too, on occasion, can radicals who are pushing at the absolute limits of what is viewed by the British establishment as politically acceptable. Because they can appeal to the king as defender of their rights, actually against Parliament, against the Whigish government or the Tory government or whatever. And there is an amazing example of this that happens four years after the Battle of Waterloo. So in
32:33 Tom Holland? 1819, and "God save the King" is played by a brass band at a great mass meeting that is held in Manchester to demand- Universal suffrage and this mass meeting is charged by the local cavalry.
32:48 Dominic Sandbrook? Hmm.
32:48 Tom Holland? And people die and this massacre comes to be called the Peterloo massacre because it's held at St Peter's Fields in Manchester. It's one of the great foundational moments in the emergence of kind of radical tradition in Britain. But there you have God Save the King being sung. So it has mass popularity. And when foreign visitors come to Britain and they hear this song being sung basically everywhere in theatres, in pubs, in the street, whatever, at meetings, none of them have any doubt that they are listening to something novel. But nothing like this really has kind of emerged before. And to quote Scholes again, from Roman times, the world had known the visible national symbol of the flag. Henceforth, it was to know the audible national symbol of the song.
33:33 Tom Holland? And because I suppose Britain emerges from the Napoleonic Wars with such incredible prestige.
33:39 Dominic Sandbrook? Hmm.
33:39 Tom Holland? There's a feeling that it has triumphed over France with its Marseillaise. God Save the King, or at least the tune of God Save the King, not the words, but the tune, comes to be seen as something that aspirational countries other than Britain should buy into.
33:55 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
33:56 Tom Holland? And so they start adopting the melody of God Save the King. And in fact, this precedes the Napoleonic Wars. It's something that's been going on throughout the second half of the eighteenth century. So Holland has done it. Denmark, a host of German states do it, including Prussia. Russia briefly gets in on the act. Then after Napoleon, it was Switzerland and Greece. And in all, the melody of God Save the King, so not the words, but the melody is ends up being adopted at one point or another by some twenty states. And these states range from Iceland to Hawaii. So it's, I had no idea about this. It's kind of stupefying.
34:36 Dominic Sandbrook? Liechtenstein still have it, don't they? Because I remember England playing Liechtenstein and it being an amusing quirk that the same tune was played twice in the two national anthems.
34:45 Tom Holland? Yeah, the England fans boo it when it's the Liechtenstein National Anthem and then they cheer it when it's the English one.
34:51 Dominic Sandbrook? Ah, like you're proud to be English.
34:52 Tom Holland? Yeah. And actually, I think in Switzerland as well, God Save the King provided the tune for the Swiss National Anthem up until, I think, the nineteen sixties. So to quote Scholes, Dominic.
35:03 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
35:04 Tom Holland? We can actually claim that on that Saturday night in September seventeen forty five. The British invented national anthems. So, hooray for us.
35:13 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, huzzar for us.
35:14 Tom Holland? Or is it huzzar? Because of course, Britain is not competing in the World Cup. England and Scotland are. And this has certain consequences, which we will be exploring after the break.
35:31 Dominic Sandbrook? Exciting. Come back after the break.
35:37 Dominic Sandbrook? This episode is brought to you by The Times and The Sunday Times. Tom, as another summer of top international football returns. It's truly incredible, isn't it, to think about how much the world has changed between the various tournaments?
35:52 Tom Holland? Looking back to when England hosted back in 1966. Everyone in the crowd supporting England were waving Union Jacks. So what fascinating trends does that illustrate?
36:03 Dominic Sandbrook? And I suppose the last time the United States hosted the tournament was in 1994. And the mood in America in the early 1990s, you know, the Cold War was over. Clinton was in the White House.
36:13 Tom Holland? I was there for that. I was in Boston.
36:15 Dominic Sandbrook? Really? I mean, that's an aspect of the story that's very rarely reported on your presence. So you know what this reminds me of, Tom? It reminds me that the future is always uncertain. You never know what's coming, but the facts need not be uncertain. And when the world feels like it's moving too fast, The Times and The Sunday Times empower you to make smarter, more confident decisions.
36:37 Tom Holland? Click or tap the banner now to learn more or visit thetimes.com.
36:47 Tom Holland? Hello, everybody. Now, as those of you who are good children will know, here in Britain, on the 21st of June, it's Father's Day.
36:57 Dominic Sandbrook? But not just here in Britain. It's also Father's Day on the 21st of June in the United States, in Canada and in the Republic of Ireland. So those are four countries that are united by dads who love to listen to The Rest Is History.
37:14 Tom Holland? And that is why we are offering an amazing 20 5% Father's Day discount on the subscription price to The Rest Is History Club because we are all heart.
37:29 Dominic Sandbrook? So treat the Peter the Great in your own life this Father's Day to early access to full series. You get say early access that you get that with a membership. You get bonus episodes, you get ad free listening, you get access to tickets for live shows. Basically, you get an entire host of supplementary benefits. And that I think is what a lot of patriarchs want, isn't it?
37:52 Tom Holland? It absolutely is because I think nothing says happy Father's Day quite like the chance to listen to six solid hours ad free about the First World War.
38:05 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, that's what most fathers want. So head to therestishistory.com and click on the word gifts. And that gift, membership of our much loved Rest Is History Club will land straight in your father's inbox on Father's Day itself.
38:25 Tom Holland? So if you want to give the best Father's Day gift there's ever been in history, ever. And we say this as the presenters of The Rest Is History, you know what to do.
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39:24 Speaker 04 All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today and disseminated into an operation order or fraggo.
39:33 Speaker 04 A fraggo that says to kill the president of Russia.
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39:50 Speaker 02 Men like Duffy, they are our most valuable weapons.
39:54 Speaker 05 Devised as a technically rigorous geopolitical action thriller.
39:57 Speaker 03 We have two tight friendly QIAs.
39:59 Speaker 05 Where Britain plays its strongest hand. He's the best. Against its strongest foe. Don't do it Duffy! Bear Hunt. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.
40:26 Dominic Sandbrook? God save the Queen, the fascist regime, it made you a moron, potential hate bomb. God save the Queen, she ain't a human being, and there's no future in England's dreaming. So apologies, everybody, that was Johnny Rotten, John Lydon there, singing God Save the Queen, the Sex Pistols hit released during the Silver Jubilee of Elizabeth II in 1977. Now, whether it reached number one or number two is still very controversial among historians, isn't it, Tom?
41:00 Tom Holland? It is.
41:00 Dominic Sandbrook? The accepted wisdom now is that it actually was number one and then the chart was fixed by the BBC to relegate it to number two. I actually think it's perfectly plausible that it actually finished at number two and that a lot of this is just based on urban legend. However, that's not the issue. This was an attack on the monarchy, so it appeared to be accusing the Queen of presiding over a fascist regime and of not being a human being and no future. Yes, but it's an attack on Jim Callahan's Britain, which is sad. But actually, this is a tribute to the power of this song. So you described God Save the King in the first half. You said it was no exaggeration to say it was the world's first pop song.
41:44 Tom Holland? Yeah.
41:44 Dominic Sandbrook? But it's a pop song that is still going strong in the 1970s. Yeah.
41:48 Tom Holland? It's the kind of longest running British earworm, I guess.
41:51 Dominic Sandbrook? Right.
41:52 Tom Holland? That we've had in our culture.
41:53 Dominic Sandbrook? Interesting that they don't copy the tune. They copied the words but not the tune, the Sex Pistols.
41:58 Tom Holland? I think because it's so famous in Britain that you don't need the tune, you just say, God save the Queen. And it kind of evokes the whole kind of majesty and prestige of the National Anthem. By this point, kind of over 200 years old. And in the course of that time, it's picked up a lot of baggage. So even before the Sex Pistols parody it.
42:19 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
42:19 Tom Holland? It has for a long time been sneered at by intellectuals, I think, in particular.
42:25 Dominic Sandbrook? By the Bien Penseur.
42:27 Tom Holland? Bien Penseur, who you're so keen on. And it's seen by them as basically a song for blimps, that it's fusty and it's dusty. And it's embarrassing. And the person who comments on this most famously is George Orwell. Who in 1941, so one year before Scholes published his book on God Save the King. Famously wrote, it is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true. That almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during God Save the King. Than of stealing from a poor box.
43:01 Dominic Sandbrook? And that's still true today. I mean, absolutely, that's true today.
43:05 Tom Holland? Sure. You were talking in the previous episode about the reverence that Americans show of the National Anthem.
43:10 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
43:10 Tom Holland? There's an obvious contrast there. So you talked about Jimi Hendrix playing Star Spangled Banner at Woodstock in 1969. And it generating great controversy. The following year, Jimi Hendrix is in Britain on the Isle of Wight, playing at the festival there. Few weeks before he dies. And there he plays God Save the Queen in exactly the same way. And it has no reaction whatsoever. Nobody.
43:34 Dominic Sandbrook? It's interesting, isn't it?
43:35 Tom Holland? Nobody cares at all. And I think to this day, I mean, how could you sum that? Maybe people have a Remainer-ish tendency, might that be there?
43:43 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, people who enjoy our sister podcast, The Rest Is Politics.
43:47 Tom Holland? Yes, I think people who take the National Anthem seriously are seen as kind of quite low status. I mean.
43:56 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
43:56 Tom Holland? You know, if you worry about the. The colour of your passport or your enthusiasm for the national anthem you're seeing is it's a bit kind of below the salt. So there's a classic example of this happened a few months after the Brexit vote in 2016. When the Tory MP for Romford, which is in Essex, you know, not the kind of place where BBC presenters necessarily go very often. This is a guy called Andrew Rossendale and he called for the BBC to end its nightly broadcast by playing God Save the Queen. Which is what the BBC had always used to do.
44:28 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes.
44:28 Tom Holland? And it's been kind of abandoned. And Kirsty Walk, presenter of Newsnight on BBC Two, who I think had not voted for Brexit, safe to say. And she said, we're incredibly happy to oblige. Good night. And then they play the Sex Pistols, God Save the Queen. So it's massive fans.
44:44 Dominic Sandbrook? Hilarious. See, controversially, this will, I don't, I don't think this will astound listeners because this is just plain to my image, but it's actually what I genuinely think. I think lots of countries actually do end their TV coverage with the national anthem. And I don't actually think it's a weird thing to do. I think it's good for social cohesion. And I don't even think, I've been in American high schools where they pledge allegiance to the flag and they do all that kind of stuff. And the standard British thing to do is to sneer at it. And George Orwell, of course, commented on that. But actually, I don't think it is worthy of being sneered at. I think it's actually quite good for people to have collective symbols and a sense of collective loyalty. Anyway, there you go.
45:20 Tom Holland? A fair point, well made. But the fact remains that people in Britain do tend to sneer at the national anthem. And so why is that? Why are people ready to sneer at it here than, I don't know, in France or America or whatever? And I get the kind of whole range of possible reasons. I mean, one undoubtedly is they find it boring. Musicians have been complaining about God Save the King for a very long time. So Gilbert, Gilbert, as in Gilbert and Sullivan. Complained that it was contemptible doggerel, although actually many, many, I mean, greater composers than Gilbert and Sullivan have actually thought it was rather good. So Bach and Beethoven and Benjamin Britten, they all composed variations on it.
45:59 Dominic Sandbrook? That's good enough for me.
46:00 Tom Holland? So yeah, the sense that it's a dirge, as we said, I think that's one reason why people look down on it. Another reason might be that they're Republicans. So the King bit of God Save the King, and even during the Revolutionary Wars with France, we said that it was a unifying anthem. But there were those in Britain who identified with the revolution, who were not persuaded that to sing God Save the King was in some way a progressive thing to do. And in that period, some of the parodies of God Save the King were much more savage than anything that the Sex Pistols came up with. So I'll sing one here. Long live great Guillotine, who shaves off head so clean of queen or king, whose power is so great that every tool of state
46:41 Tom Holland? drear deth his mighty weight. Wonderful thing. So I mean, Jack Aubrey would not like that, would he?
46:49 Dominic Sandbrook? He would not. And that takes us back to that last episode about the Star Spangled Banner, that anthems are never fixed, that people can always reinterpret them and adapt them, and put in new words to suit their own political ends. And they will do throughout the rest of this series.
47:02 Tom Holland? Yeah. And this is obviously happening throughout this period, because all these other countries are coming up with their own words as well.
47:08 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
47:08 Tom Holland? So God Save the King, the problem might be with the King, or it might be with God. You know, you might be a secularist, you think, you know, we're in a modern age, it's all musty, dusty, fusty superstition, we don't want to bother with God. There's the whole British Empire thing. God Save the King became the anthem of the British Empire. It was the anthem of the Dominions, so South Africa, of Australia, of New Zealand, of Canada. And all those countries have evolved alternative anthems. And so I think that generates a sense, perhaps, that God Save the King is something antiquated to be got rid of. And then there's the kind of whole trend in historical takes on Great Britain as
47:53 Tom Holland? A kind of early modern state that has never managed to evolve.
47:56 Dominic Sandbrook? Hmm.
47:57 Tom Holland? So this is a thesis that's particularly associated with Tom Nairn, Linda Colly, who wrote a famous book called Britain's, kind of essentially arguing for this, the idea that Great Britain was a kind of leader in the early modern period, but has never really gone the full course and is still, is kind of stillborn as a modern state. And therefore, God Save the King is kind of representative of this. The fact that we're still singing something from the 18th century is an embarrassment. So that's another reason.
48:26 Dominic Sandbrook? This is such a sort of 1990s landmark wearing tape, I think.
48:31 Tom Holland? Yes, very, very 1990s. But then there is a simpler reason. We're doing this in honour of the Football World Cup. And that is that you might feel uncomfortable about singing God Save the King because you are either a Scottish or English player or fan. And you are at the 2026 World Cup. Because this, I think, it does raise issues for both the Scottish and the English teams to sing God Save the King. National anthems are obviously a really important part of the World Cup, which is why we're doing this series. We wouldn't be doing it otherwise.
49:06 Dominic Sandbrook? Hmm.
49:07 Tom Holland? I don't think we've said this, but I mean, people who are listening who've never watched a match in the Football World Cup. Before every match, the two teams who are playing, you know, they line up and they sing along to their respective anthems. Or if you are from Spain or Bosnia and Herzegovina, you hum along because those are anthems that don't actually have any words. And for most countries, this is, you know, is not controversial. Every country pretty much has a national anthem. But there is an issue for Scotland and for England because both of them are constituent parts of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. And that means that they have the same national anthem, namely God Save the King, which is the British national anthem. And the same is true of Wales and Northern Ireland.
49:51 Tom Holland? And if they had qualified, then they would be facing the same problem. And the United Kingdom is unique in having its constituent nations compete separately in this way. So when Spain play, you know, Catalonia is not playing. When Germany play, you don't have Bavaria. Canada is hosting it. You don't have Quebec appearing as a kind of separate team in the World Cup. And so people may be wondering, well, how come the home nations, as they're called, England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, how come they enjoy this privilege? It's because football's earliest governing bodies are the home nations. The English and Scottish and Welsh and Irish governing bodies long
50:36 Tom Holland? preceded the emergence of FIFA, which administers the World Cup. FIFA is a parvenu by comparison. So Scotland and England played the earliest international football match, as recognised by FIFA, in 1872. And that was 32 years before the founding of FIFA and 58 before the first World Cup.
50:57 Dominic Sandbrook? And that's why Scotland.
50:59 Tom Holland? And England.
51:00 Dominic Sandbrook? Wales, Northern Ireland have their own, and England actually, I don't know, I shouldn't leave England out, why they have their own distinct identities as teams that do not exist as UN member states or whatever.
51:11 Tom Holland? Yes. And so I think if you're Scottish or English, this can be a cause of great patriotic pride. You know, we got there first, it's our game.
51:21 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
51:21 Tom Holland? Our governing bodies are much older than FIFA or the World Cup. Brilliant. But I think it does pose an issue on the national anthem front.
51:29 Dominic Sandbrook? Of course.
51:31 Tom Holland? And so the two nations who are competing in this year's World Cup, Scotland and England from Britain, they have come up with differing answers to this kind of pose to this question.
51:42 Dominic Sandbrook? Because you said a second ago, oh, you know, when they come out at the World Cup, by rights, they would be lining up and singing the national anthem of their country, which is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which would be God Save the King.
51:54 Tom Holland? Yeah.
51:54 Dominic Sandbrook? But of course, everybody who's listened to this podcast who is Scottish or who knows anything about football knows that the Scots do not sing that anthem.
52:01 Tom Holland? And the thing, just to say, is that there is nothing kind of inherently offensive about God Save the King to Scots or even to very enthusiastic Scottish nationalists. Because. Charles III rules as King of the United Kingdom by virtue of his descent from the Stuarts, from Mary Queen of Scots, and that's Stuart Line.
52:26 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
52:26 Tom Holland? Despite both the Hanoverians and the Stuart Lines, they are on the throne by virtue of their descent from Mary Queen of Scots. And Scottish nationalist leaders have been perfectly happy to stick up for God Save the King. So Alex Salmond, who was the SNP's leader, Scottish Nationalist Party's leader, who first kind of put Scottish independence on the table as a serious prospect. In 2015, when Jeremy Corbyn, the radically left wing leader of the Labour Party at the time, and he went to a Battle of Britain memorial service.
52:59 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
52:59 Tom Holland? And he refused to sing God Save the Queen. And Salmond said that this was infantile. Salmond was quite keen on the Queen. He loved to talk to her about horse racing, they kind of mutual interest. And then in the same month, Nicola Sturgeon, who succeeded Alex Salmond as leader of the SNP, the Scottish Nationalist Party, she joined the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh, opening a new railway line in the Scottish Borders. And the band struck up God Save the Queen, and Nicola Sturgeon sung it perfectly happily.
53:28 Dominic Sandbrook? Sang with gusto.
53:29 Tom Holland? Yeah, sang it with gusto. And the official policy of the SNP remains that should Scotland become an independent country, then they will retain the monarchy. The monarchy would continue with something, joining England and Scotland as it had done before the creation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain in the early 18th century. But that said, there is a very strong republican strain in the Scottish independence movement. And in fact, in Scotland generally, enthusiasm for the monarchy is noticeably lower than it is, say, in England.
54:03 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
54:04 Tom Holland? And I think that enthusiasm for God Save the King in particular is shadowed in Scotland by a vague sense that, say, Bonnie Prince Charlie was fighting for Scottish independence in 1745. I mean, this is kind of the notion that is fostered by TV shows like Outlander and things like that.
54:24 Dominic Sandbrook? Right.
54:25 Tom Holland? Now, it has to be said that this is completely ahistorical. In Scotland, 1745, the arrival of Bonnie Prince Charlie, this is a Scottish civil war, particularly between the Highlands and the Lowlands, really. But there is, I think, a sense, wouldn't you say, that?
54:42 Dominic Sandbrook? Oh, yeah.
54:43 Tom Holland? A lot of people in Scotland, kind of, Bonnie Prince Charlie is promoted as a Scottish hero of independence, something like Robert Bruce or William Wallace or someone like that, which he absolutely wasn't.
54:53 Dominic Sandbrook? I'm surprised Mel Gibson hasn't made a film about it, with the English as the villains. I mean, that is the perception of Battle of Cloddon, of the whole enterprise, that it's Scotland versus England, and yet again, the bullying tyrannical English have wiped the floor with the Scots.
55:06 Tom Holland? And as we say, this is completely ahistorical. The Battle of Cloddon was, you know, it's a battle fought between two competing visions of Scotland. However, it is true that in that summer of 1745, one of the numerous verses that is being written during this kind of first flush of God Save the King mania, it does name check rebellious Scots and express the hope that they will soon be crushed. And Billy Connolly picked up on this, the great Scottish comedian, he complained about it in a kind of very funny monologue. But just to reiterate, you know, there are loads of lyrics being composed in this period. So there are lyrics being composed that damned George the Second, for instance. People on both sides of the divide are coming up with lyrics all the time, so it's not
55:50 Tom Holland? surprising that there are Scotaphobic lyrics coming from England, for instance. The same is true on the other side, that Jacobite writers are writing hostile lyrics about the Hanoverians. But I think you could see that all this kind of swirl explains perhaps why God Save the King has less purchase in Scotland than it does in England, because the historical reality doesn't really matter when you're dealing with the National Anthem, as we saw in our previous episode. What matters is
56:18 Dominic Sandbrook? Certainly.
56:18 Tom Holland? the tug of the heartstrings.
56:20 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
56:20 Tom Holland? The emotions that they generate.
56:22 Dominic Sandbrook? You were saying the reason that it's not so popular in Scotland is because of the associations with the 45, Cloddon, whatever. I think actually the real reason it's not so popular in Scotland is it's associated with England.
56:36 Tom Holland? Right.
56:36 Dominic Sandbrook? Because English teams sing it, English supporters sing it, and therefore by definition, Scottish fans do not want to sing it.
56:44 Tom Holland? Although Scottish fans did sing it. For decades and decades. But I agree. I mean, it would be very odd, I think, for, say, Scotland and England if they were playing in the World Cup. And who knows, they may meet in the final.
57:00 Dominic Sandbrook? Scotland would have to qualify from the first group stage, which they've never, ever done.
57:04 Tom Holland? Well, we will see. We will. Time will tell. But I mean, it would, it would seem mad for both sides to stand there and sing absolutely the same song, the same. I mean, it would be very, very funny.
57:12 Dominic Sandbrook? Sing it twice together.
57:15 Tom Holland? And England playing against Scotland is a very, you know, it's the oldest international football rivalry.
57:19 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
57:20 Tom Holland? England were playing Scotland football right the way up to the mid eighties.
57:23 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, every year. Home Nations Championship. Yeah.
57:25 Tom Holland? Then that stops. But in another sport, rugby, England continue to play Scotland every, every year because there's this contest, the Six Nations, where they all, various countries play each other, and that includes England and Scotland. And so going into the nineties, I guess Scottish rugby players had a particular incentive to try and come up with a new anthem. And the one that they finally settle on is a song called Flower of Scotland, which had been composed in 1966 by a folk singer called Roy Williamson, who was one half of a folk duo called The Corries. And very like the Star Spangled Banner, it
58:04 Tom Holland? was inspired by a rousing national victory over a hated foe. But this particular victory, in the case of The Corries, was one that had been won six and a half centuries before. So it's not like the Star Spangled Banner, inspired by something that the guy who composed it had seen. I mean, this is going way, way back. And the victory that it celebrates is the Battle of Banockburn, which had been won by the Scottish King, Robert Bruce, over the English King, Edward the Second, in 1314. And for those who haven't heard it, the song begins with a kind of rousing blast that's been lifted from Verdi's Chorus of the Hebrew
58:44 Tom Holland? Slaves. And then you are back to the early 14th century, when the Scots won the greatest victory in their military history over a much larger English invasion force.
58:57 Tom Holland? And it's a celebration of Bruce and his army who had stood against, and I quote, proud Edward's army and sent him homeward to think again.
59:08 Dominic Sandbrook? But you know what, though? I think this is a massive dirge. Flower of Scotland is a real dirge. I mean, people say God save the king is a dirge. Flower of Scotland is very slow and it's kind of stately and slightly melancholy, I think, in its melody.
59:22 Tom Holland? Do you know who would agree with you is the Secretary of the Scottish FA. And I think around 2005, he proposed getting rid of it because by this point it's been adopted by the Scottish rugby team and then it ends up being adopted by the Scottish football team. I mean, it has to be said, it does work well against England. If you're Scottish and you're playing against England, it's brilliant. Slightly less effective, I think, if you're playing rugby against the French or the Irish or the Welsh or, or indeed the Italians, all that stuff about sending proud Edward back home.
59:53 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
59:53 Tom Holland? I think with the bagpipes, it is kind of pretty stirring.
59:56 Dominic Sandbrook? That's what Callum, our producer, is saying. Callum and Callum's mum cries at it all the time, apparently. So some people like it.
1:00:02 Tom Holland? And so the Scottish FA, they end up adopting it as Scotland's national anthem, just in time for the 1998 World Cup, in which Scotland had qualified. And as you pointed out, Dominic, do not progress beyond the first round.
1:00:18 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
1:00:18 Tom Holland? And 2026 will be the first time since 1998 that Scotland have competed in a World Cup. And so any fans of songs about early 14th century battles out there, you know, tune in and listen to the Flower of Scotland.
1:00:34 Dominic Sandbrook? So who are they? They're playing Brazil, Morocco, and the people of Haiti can look forward to hearing the Scots. Hearing about the Battle of Bannockburn.
1:00:44 Tom Holland? Hearing about the proud Edward.
1:00:46 Dominic Sandbrook? They love, they talk of nothing else in Porto Pras.
1:00:49 Tom Holland? Now, the England national team, when they line up, will not be singing a song about, say, England's great victory at Hallidan Hill in the reign of Edward III over the Scots.
1:00:59 Dominic Sandbrook? Should sing about Flogdon.
1:01:01 Tom Holland? Good. Well, I think, I mean, it would be nice to have another early 14th century battle, perhaps. I mean, it would be like us singing, I guess, singing a song about the Battle of Cressy, perhaps.
1:01:11 Dominic Sandbrook? I mean, I'd be so up for that, I can't tell you.
1:01:14 Tom Holland? Well, so, so the England team will be singing God Save the King.
1:01:17 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
1:01:17 Tom Holland? It's the National Anthem of Britain, and it's been cast as the National Anthem of England. And I think the reason that they are happy to do that in a way that the Scots aren't is, I mean, the clue is there actually in the Sex Pistols song, because in the opening line, it begins with the British National Anthem.
1:01:32 Dominic Sandbrook? Hmm.
1:01:33 Tom Holland? But then it's England dreaming. And there is a tendency on the part of the English historically to allied Britain with England. And the Scots and the Welsh and the all Irish, they, they love that.
1:01:45 Dominic Sandbrook? We sometimes do it on, in this podcast. And in fact, the great historian A J P Taylor, his book about British history between the wars, Britain between the wars was called England 1918 to 1945, or whatever it was called. He just absolutely lends into it. And Churchill did that quite often in the Second World War in his rhetoric.
1:02:03 Tom Holland? Well, Nelson did it as well. England expects every man will do his duty. I mean, that was still the case when England hosted the World Cup in 1966, because people in the crowd were waving not the flag of St George, the English flag, but the Union Jack.
1:02:17 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
1:02:17 Tom Holland? And now it's much likelier to be the cross of St George. And that happened in, I think, in the 1996 Euros.
1:02:25 Dominic Sandbrook? It did.
1:02:26 Tom Holland? When England got to play Scotland. So it was kind of Gazza and his great goal and all of that.
1:02:32 Dominic Sandbrook? The dentist's chair celebration.
1:02:33 Tom Holland? The dentist's chair celebration. And I think it's not maybe a coincidence that Flower of Scotland was formally adopted as the Scottish anthem by the Scottish F A the following year.
1:02:43 Dominic Sandbrook? Hmm.
1:02:43 Tom Holland? Maybe not a complete coincidence. It had been kind of informally used, I think, since 1993, but it gets kind of officially enshrined then. It has to be said, there is absolutely no sign that the English F A are remotely contemplating changing God Save the King. They seem perfectly happy with it. But there are people who, who kind of mutter and say, well, we should have a properly English theme.
1:03:06 Dominic Sandbrook? So I guess that the overwhelming favourite would be Jerusalem.
1:03:12 Tom Holland? But you know what? In the seventies, so in the seventies, when Don Revie was the England manager, modernising England manager, there was a brief period, I think we're talking about roughly between 1974 and 1976, when they adopted Land of Hope and Glory, which is still a very British.
1:03:32 Dominic Sandbrook? And it was controversial. It was controversial. Lots of people didn't like it and they said, bring back the old anthem.
1:03:38 Tom Holland? Well, and another one is I vow to thee my country, which again is about Britain. Yeah. I think the appeal of Jerusalem is it is very specifically about England. So for people who don't know, it was a poem written by William Blake, the great romantic poet. So if you love a romantic poem, I mean, that ticks your box.
1:03:55 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
1:03:55 Tom Holland? It refers to England as a green and pleasant land. So that's like lots of national anthems where, you know, which celebrate the natural beauty of the country.
1:04:04 Dominic Sandbrook? Nice topographical description. People love that in an anthem.
1:04:07 Tom Holland? I think the music is great. So written by Sir Hubert Perry and orchestrated by Elgar. Actually, George V, Dominic, so one of your great heroes.
1:04:16 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
1:04:17 Tom Holland? He said he much preferred it to God Save the King. So I think there's maybe a monarchist case for it.
1:04:22 Dominic Sandbrook? Maybe.
1:04:23 Tom Holland? Blake, of course, was a revolutionary. You know, he got had up for seditious criticism of the monarchy. So it would appeal to anti-monarchists as well. And it has this famous line, bring me my chariot of fire. So it has a kind of sporting link because chariot of fire gave the name to the great, you know, that film about the Olympics, whatever it was.
1:04:46 Dominic Sandbrook? Did you just say whatever it was?
1:04:47 Tom Holland? Whatever it was.
1:04:50 Tom Holland? Something about the Olympics. And also it's kind of about Jesus coming to England and coming to Glastonbury specifically. So it would appeal to fans of music festivals. So I think it does tick a lot of boxes. And also I have to say, it is already the official hymn of a great English national sport, namely cricket.
1:05:08 Dominic Sandbrook? I think it's got a bit of a class orientation Jerusalem there, doesn't it? Because it's a very, very public school chapel hymn. I mean, for example, before we started broadcasting, Tabby was saying. I think she used to sing it when she was a sto. So, you know, I wonder whether that might taint it for some listeners.
1:05:23 Tom Holland? Yeah, possibly. But I'm sure you could kind of soup it up.
1:05:26 Dominic Sandbrook? Maybe.
1:05:26 Tom Holland? Become the people's anthem.
1:05:29 Dominic Sandbrook? Right. Change the lyrics. Exactly.
1:05:30 Tom Holland? Yeah, a player at Glastonbury. I mean, who knows?
1:05:33 Dominic Sandbrook? I'm still in the God Save the King camp, frankly.
1:05:35 Tom Holland? I'm agnostic.
1:05:36 Dominic Sandbrook? Okay, as always, Tom.
1:05:38 Tom Holland? Yeah, as always.
1:05:39 Dominic Sandbrook? You played your traditional card.
1:05:40 Tom Holland? Yeah, I have. So that is the national anthem of England and Scotland.
1:05:45 Dominic Sandbrook? Wow.
1:05:46 Tom Holland? And next, Dominic, we've got Germany, haven't we? England's old rivals at football.
1:05:50 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, we're talking about all kinds of people, actually. We'll be talking about the Kaiser. He'll be back. We'll be talking about Horst Wessel.
1:05:56 Tom Holland? Will we?
1:05:57 Dominic Sandbrook? The Nazi martyr.
1:05:59 Tom Holland? Maybe a little, little mention of Hitler.
1:06:01 Dominic Sandbrook? A little mention of Hitler. Yeah, the East Germans, Konrad Adenauer. So it's actually an unbelievably interesting story, the story of the German national anthem, or should I say anthems?
1:06:11 Tom Holland? Yeah, wonderful. Looking forward to that, Dominic.
1:06:14 Dominic Sandbrook? And then the Dutch.
1:06:15 Tom Holland? So, yeah, then we've got the Dutch, then we've got Brazil, and then we have South Africa.
1:06:19 Dominic Sandbrook? Okay, so if people want to listen to those episodes now, can they, is there any way they can do so? Is there any mechanism?
1:06:24 Tom Holland? Well, there is, Dominic. And this will come as news to people. If you want to hear all of those episodes in one go, and you're not already a member of the Rest is History Club, then you can go to therestishistory.com, sign up there, and you get the whole lot. Plus, a whole load of supplementary benefits.
1:06:43 Dominic Sandbrook? And the only way to get those benefits is to sign up on that website, am I right?
1:06:46 Tom Holland? Yes, that is correct.
1:06:48 Dominic Sandbrook? Okay, brilliant.
1:06:49 Tom Holland? We're going to go out on Jerusalem, the perhaps future English national anthem.
1:06:55 Dominic Sandbrook? Bye bye.
1:06:55 Tom Holland? Bye bye.
1:09:02 Tom Holland? Hello everyone, it's Tom Holland here. I am with the great Helen Castor. We're talking about the she-wolves, the great queens of medieval England. We've already done two. Today it's the third, Isabella of France, who marries Edward II. A very problematic husband, it has to be said. And she really does go the full she-wolf on him. And here is a clip from that episode. And what about Edward II, the anointed king of England? That's a bigger problem, isn't it? A much bigger problem.
1:09:39 Speaker 06 The anointed king, he's now a prisoner. If they know one thing about Edward is that you can't trust his word, they can't put him back on the throne, not even if he's promising to be good. But what are you going to do? How do you, how do you remove a king? They do it the best way they know how, which is they depose him, they list all his many crimes and faults in Parliament and they say he has attacked his own people and therefore he must no longer be king. They also get him to abdicate. You need belts and braces if you possibly can. And they declare that his young son, Edward the third is now king and he is crowned in February thirteen twenty seven.
1:10:22 Speaker 06 But the problem now is you have an ex-king in prison, in custody. And by September of thirteen twenty seven, already three plots to free him have been discovered and have been foiled. This isn't a tenable situation. Something has to be done.
1:10:38 Tom Holland? Edward by this point is in Buck Castle by Bristol. And he conveniently dies.
1:10:46 Tom Holland? And what are the theories on how he dies, Helen?
1:10:50 Speaker 06 Well, there are many theories, including a theory that he didn't die at all and was in fact spirited away to become a hermit in Germany. I don't buy that. As far as I can see from all the available evidence, on the night of the twenty first of September thirteen twenty seven, Edward dies conveniently, without explanation, in his prison cell.
1:11:12 Tom Holland? Come on, Helen, we know how he died. Stop. Stop skirting around the issue. Get to the poker.
1:11:18 Speaker 06 The red hot poker. Well, what we know is this story gets told and of course it gets told because it encapsulates the whole story in one moment, does it not?
1:11:28 Tom Holland? What happens to the red hot poker?
1:11:30 Speaker 06 You're going to make me say this. A red hot poker thrust into his anus to burn his intestines from the inside out. And the story goes that, of course, this is an excellent way to kill a king because it leaves the outside of his body untouched, so his body can be displayed. But also, of course, symbolically, this is harkening back to his ill-fated and deeply unwise relationship with Piers Galveston.
1:11:54 Tom Holland? How early do these stories appear? I mean, is it possible that this is historically accurate?
1:12:00 Speaker 06 I can't prove that it isn't and they do appear quite early.
1:12:05 Tom Holland? I think generally on The Rest is History, if there's a good story.
1:12:07 Speaker 06 Let's go with it.
1:12:08 Tom Holland? You know, and it's not completely implausible, we'll go with it. So let's say that he does, he has a red hot poker shoved up his arse and that's the end of Ed of the Second. Thanks very much for listening and if you'd like to hear the first two episodes, then go to therestishistory.com, sign up there, but I can't believe you haven't already done that.
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