E M P - current productions

We’ve loved them and loathed them. Fought wars for them and against them. Laughed and cheered at them, jeered and sneered at them. Some of us have tried to get rid of them – even tried to kill them. For more than a thousand years, the Kings and Queens of England have been focal points of our daily lives and, despite everything, they’re still here.

A stranger collection of people it’s somehow difficult to imagine. Some you wouldn’t want as neighbours, let alone running the country; others took to the job like ducks to water and gave us reasons to love them. We watched bemused as the throne was passed on to, or seized by, a series of power hungry and not very attractive individuals. And they were mainly foreigners, of course. It wasn’t until 1399 that a king who spoke English as his first language came to the throne, for heaven’s sake.

So let’s look back on a thousand years of Royal history, beginning with a late autumn day in 1066 when Duke William of Normandy landed at Pevensey to claim the throne he believed was rightfully his. There are plenty of surprises along the way. Among them an “unlisted” King who ruled for more than a year and another that tried to convert to Islam and take England with him! We’ll also reveal how in the twentieth century one King secretly took over the running of the country to prevent a Communist revolution! Other loveable and not so loveable characters include William Rufus, the Blackadder of his day, and Richard The Lionheart, who came to embody English medieval chivalry - even though he loathed the place and only bothered to visit it three times.

We’ll pass through plague and pestilence and revolting peasants. We’ll meet Richard III, the man Shakespeare turned into a hump-backed pantomime villain before we come across old Henry VIII, with his never-ending marital problems and his shiny new made-to-measure church. On we’ll go through the glorious reign of Henry’s daughter Elizabeth, whose navy saw off the dastardly Spanish before we arrive at King James I, the man that fed-up Catholics tried to blow to kingdom come.

We’ll see why Charles I and Cromwell just never got on. And why was it that for more than a hundred years, all our kings were called George? And then there was dear old Victoria – sombre old Victoria, who summed up her age. We’ll arrive finally at the monarchy today – the media monarchy, a family in the spotlight and scrutinised as never before.

We bring you a bizarre, astonishing and strangely often unknown history that really does help to explain not just our past, but also what is going on right now.

Hop aboard the Royal roller coaster and be prepared for a bumpy ride!