Can anyone explain this sudden enthusiasm for Agincourt, that unexpected victory over the French, now being celebrated, or rather commemorated, on radio, on digital, online? It was so weird to switch on Radio 4 on Sunday morning (which just happened to be St Crispin’s Day, the day on which the battle was fought) to discover that even Sunday Worship was being devoted to commemorating one of the bloodiest battles in that most bloodthirsty period. The service, old-fashioned Matins, came from the Chapel Royal at St James’s, and apparently the priests, choristers and vestrymen from that chapel were singing on the battlefield alongside Henry V in October 1415, when the English bowmen, just 6,000 to 9,000 of them, took on their French adversaries and beat them into the mud — in spite of being outnumbered by up to five to one. As the solemn voice of the sub-dean intoned prayers and supplications for his predecessors at the Chapel Royal, it was hard not to giggle at the pomposity and inherent madness of it all.
Quite apart from the fact that it happened an awfully long time ago, we were told that Agincourt was ‘one of the great moments in our nation’s story’, which would not have made much sense in a history lesson.
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