COMPULSORY PREFACE
(This Means You)
Histories have previously been written with the object of exalting their authors. The object of this History is to console the reader. No other history does this.
History is not what you thought. It is what you can remember. All other history defeats itself.
This is the only Memorable History of England, because all the History that you can remember is in this book, which is the result of years of research in golf-clubs, gun-rooms, green-rooms, etc.
For instance, 2 out of the 4 Dates originally included were eliminated at the last moment, a research done at the Eton and Harrow match having revealed that they are not memorable.
The Editors will be glad of further assistance towards the elimination, in future editions, of any similarly unhistorical matter which, despite their vigilance, may have crept into the text.
They take this opportunity of acknowledging their inestimable debt to the mass of educated men and women of their race whose historical intuitions and opinions this work enshrines.
Also, to the Great British People without whose self-sacrificing determination to become top Nation there would have been no (memorable) history.
History is now at an end (see p. 113); this History is therefore final.