Читать книгу The Men Commandments - Christian O’Connell - Страница 32

Elizabeth’s successor was the first Stuart monarch of England, James I, who doesn’t really have much to add to the history of men apart from the curious story that he might have invented one of our favourite pieces of meat ever. He was a strange man who spoke with a lisp and dribbled quite a bit. These days he would have worked in IT.

James I was such a fan of good meat that when he was once presented with a really high-quality loin of beef for his dinner, he pulled out his sword and uttered the words, ‘I dub thee Sir-loin.’ It’s interesting to think that without James I, Aberdeen Angus steakhouses may never have existed.

He also reigned during the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 where ex-soldier and Catholic Guy Fawkes attempted to blow up Parliament while the Protestant king was inside it. Although the barrels had been placed many months before in a cellar under the House of Lords, and were ready for igniting, Fawkes was caught when he made the cardinal sin of going back to the unlit fuses. Ironically, this fact is of course celebrated each year by men across the country on Bonfire Night. It’s every man’s divine right to ignore the shouts of ‘NO, DAD, YOU’LL BE BLINDED’ and stride over to the firework that’s failed to go off, as if we can make it work by igniting it with sheer testosterone. Guy Fawkes was tortured and hung, drawn and quartered but I’d like to think he died for our right to perform this very act.