Read this book, and you’ll be able to do some fun things.
You’ll be able to recite all of our kings and queens in order, you’ll be able to draw a freehand map of Europe, you’ll be able to tell any interested parties how many presidents were called ‘James’ and you’ll know which prime minister came before the Earl of Rosebery.
Indeed, you’ll know that the Earl of Rosebery was a prime minister in the first place, and also that he married an heiress and won the Derby – like Edward VII, who, incidentally, was Queen Victoria’s eldest son.
Knowing this kind of stuff is fun, it’s useful and there is no need whatsoever for a gigantic brain.
If you’re to believe me when I say this, and if you’re to believe that by merely reading this book you’ll know very many things, it may be helpful if I explain a little of how this project came about.
It began with something of a personal climb-down.
You see, for some years I‘d been enjoying the social perks that come with being a ‘Grandmaster of Memory’: being ushered to the front of the queue at my local Tesco, receiving free bottles of champagne from unwary barmen, having my hands stroked by pretty girls with star-struck gazes.
These were obviously good times. But they were being generated by a terrible illusion. You see, my ability to learn a two-hundred digit number in the time it takes to feed a cat was causing people to overestimate the speed of my brain. People supposed that, since they could only manage about ten in a similar period, my brain travelled about twenty times faster than your standard road-going model.
Now, on numerous occasions I tried my best to explain that this was not the case. Repeatedly, I described the techniques that are entirely responsible for my capacity to remember: a wonderful collection of imaginative manoeuvres with a tradition of expert practice that stretches back millennia.
But mere explanation proved next to useless in defusing the aura of genius attached to my knowing, for instance, the address and phone number of every pizza-delivery joint in mainland Europe.
The core trouble was that you have to experience these techniques yourself before you can really trust them to work.
So I decided to actually show (forcefully, where necessary) my friends and family, and any members of the public who cared to take an interest, what was going on inside my head as I performed the memory marvels that were in danger of becoming the basis of my entire social life.
I therefore began a series of educative ‘memory walks’ in London. Ten or fifteen of us would gather of an afternoon at an appointed spot, on the understanding that if, after an hour or so, those present were not able to flawlessly recite both backwards and forwards the sixty or so kings and queens of England and Britain, or whatever else was on the menu for that week (giving relevant biographical details, of course), then I’d eat my hat.
We’d pick a path about some of the capital’s landmarks and I’d instruct my fellow walkers to imagine bizarre scenarios – a bottle full of wolves at the foot of the National Portrait Gallery, a footballer in a toga against a lamp-post in Hyde Park, bowtie-wearing geese escaping from a tub of lard in Little Venice. We proceeded at a lazy pace, and there was much good-humoured banter – along with the occasional high-five or boat ride.
These were memory techniques in action: ways of remembering that are kind on the mind, quickly learnt and formidably powerful. Invented by the Greeks, they were perfected in the Middle Ages and, though they still enjoy a mild renown, are ridiculously underused in the present day.
The results were most gratifying. People seemed to be enjoying themselves a good deal, and, more pertinently, I wasn’t eating any hats. Recall was generally perfect, memories were still in place after many weeks and the facts learnt were regularly and effortlessly called to mind. Some of my walkers, it emerged, were even beginning to blaze ruinous trails through the pub quizzes of South London.
‘This is really cool, Ed,’ people told me. ‘Can we learn the hundred most common varieties of cat next week?’ I beamed as I nodded back at them, but behind this show of pleasure and pride a niggling cluster of doubts stopped me from wholeheartedly agreeing with them that this was indeed ‘cool’.
I still privately suspected, you see, that all the things we were learning were things that normal people should know as a matter of course, that these walks were an embarrassing necessity, perhaps, for people like me who lack a thorough education, but were hardly something of general value.
This conviction lessened in power, though, as I noticed ‘historians’ joining my walks. At first I thought that there must be some mistake, or that they had come to mock me, but again and again I saw these ‘scholars of history’ at the back of my tour group, furtively forming the images as they followed along, all ears.
A thought as wonderful as it was appalling began to grow in my mind. Maybe no one really knows this stuff; maybe even paid-up students of history go a bit blank when you start talking about the many sons of King Aethelwulf of Wessex.
Some amateur research was merited. A short investigation ensued. This is what was found:
• Oxford history undergraduates can freely name an average of only 9 of the 52 British prime ministers (that’s 17%). They haven’t even heard of more than half of them.
• Cambridge historians are even more ignorant.
• Their professors are not much better.
• The average pedestrian is on a yet more miserable footing.
I tried asking about our kings and queens. A slightly different, though equally bleak, picture emerged.
On hearing the combination of a common boy’s name and a number – say, ‘William’ and ‘the fifth’ – people recognized that it was a king I was asking about, they ‘remembered’ he came from ‘quite a while ago’, they reported hearing something about him at some point, but were generally unable to provide any further detail. ‘Was he the son of William IV?’ some ventured. The objectivity required for my data gathering made it impossible for me to respond, ‘No, you idiot.’
Such stumbling performances are totally justified for a king like William V, who never existed. But such responses, and there were many, are much less excellent when the man in question is a national hero, like Henry III.
Perhaps, though, I was being old fashioned. Perhaps knowing stuff is outdated. Maybe everyone has gleefully traded in their knowledge of the world for an internet connection and the capacity to bluff when the power is down.
When I asked people about this, though, they didn’t seem to agree at all. They thought it would be a relief to know their kings and queens, for example, that it would be ‘interesting’ and ‘helpful’ and ‘good’. Indeed, many reported the intention to learn them ‘soon’, which was encouraging, even if my follow-up test after six months revealed that none had.
So the situation seems to be this: hardly anyone knows this stuff yet a good deal of people would like to and that hardly anyone seems to know how to go about learning these things yet all are capable of doing so.
A simple and enjoyable means was needed by which anyone could remember a choice selection of things, things that everyone kind of wants to know but can’t get to stick in their mind. So I wrote this book.
Memory, you have to understand, works perfectly well in each of us – when it can be bothered.
The trick of remembering is to make sure your memory, a slothful creature prone to taking time out to do the mental equivalent of texting itself at the back of the class, sits up and takes notice.
The art of memory is thus the art of making sure that what you give your mind to remember is as bright and amusing and energetic and outrageous as possible.
Now, with this book, Remember, Remember, I’ve cooked up four stories that will, with luck, have your memory feasting like there’s no tomorrow.
Gone are the bitterly boring long lists of names that your memory will have tried and failed to digest in the past. Instead, that same information has been hidden inside these four stories, four incident-packed romps – that have been designed to be gobbled up with the utmost ease.
The principle is that each name is transformed into a memorable event and that this list as a whole makes a string of events, or narrative.
To give one example: the eighth president of the US, Martin Van Buren, will become a Martian in a van that’s burning. The thing about Martians in burning vans is that they’re a lot more bright and amusing and energetic and outrageous than the sound of Martin Van Buren’s name, making them about a hundred times easier to remember.
Every character will be transformed in similar fashion and, to remember their sequence, they’ll be introduced in order along a familiar journey (in this case, through an airport as we head for our flight to the US).
Once you’ve read the story and want to recall a name or part of the sequence, you’ll travel that route in your imagination – where you’ll effortlessly find the things you saw happening there some time before. The name will spring automatically into your mind.
The sections on the prime ministers of Britain, the presidents of the US and the kings and queens of England and Britain each divide into two. The first half is the basic story of what happened: from this you’ll learn to recite all the relevant people backwards as well as forwards, and you’ll be able to jump in at any point and name the people either side.
The second section builds upon the first, touring over the same story, while adding historical and cultural colour. Here, you’ll end up knowing something of the character of each leader, of their personal habits, their achievements and the events of their time. The second section thus adds depth and context to the first.
Ideally, you’ll be inspired by the end to go it alone on any topic that interests you. And also to use the framework of British and American history that this book provides, and take it in directions of your own.
The one rule of thumb that I might ask you to bear in mind as you read is simply this: if you imagine something vividly, you won’t forget it.
With that, I’ll leave you to your imaginative adventures.