Quick: in what year did the American Civil War end?

If “1865” springs instantly from your lips, you are in rare company. According to alarmed surveys published by education think tanks, fewer than half of college students know the answer—or, indeed, know which side won the Civil War, never mind that current national politics would seem to cast doubt on that outcome. Fewer than half know what years World War II was fought or that Germany was involved somehow. Wounded Knee is something vaguely bad that happened in the vague past. And as for Brown v. Board….

But perhaps thus it has ever been. And if civilization seems always ready to tumble over the brink, so it was when, confronted with evidence that British students didn’t know the basics of their sceptred isle’s storied history, Punch writers W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman pulled together their appropriately satirical book 1066 and All That.

Published in 1931, its title a sly dig at Robert Graves’ World War I memoir Good-bye to All That, Sellar and Yeatman’s silly book assumed that there were only a few important dates to know. Two, to be precise: 55 B.C.E., when Julius Caesar landed, and the aforementioned 1066. The Romans, they note, were important in British history on account of having beaten the natives. They add, to soothe injured British feelings, “This was in the Olden Days, when the Romans were top nation on account of their classical education, etc.” And as for 1066, the Norman Conquest marked a Good Thing—the capitals are the authors’—inasmuch as “from this time onwards England stopped being conquered and thus was able to become top nation.”

Good Things are the authors’ stock in trade, for they make the fact-bereft reader feel—well, good, or at least a little more reassured about this whole history business. And why not? History is full of decidedly Bad Things, after all, such as the defeat of the British at Bunker Hill by one “Dick Washington,” who did so with his little hatchet, which in any event wasn’t at all sporting, since the British lost the war only by virtue of the fact that the Allies were on the side of the colonials. And in any event, “the war was really a draw, since England remained top nation and had the Allies afterwards, while the Americans, in memory of George III’s madness, still refuse to drink tea.”

Got that? Good. Yesterday, Oct. 14, marked the 950th anniversary of the Norman victory over the Saxon king of England at Hastings in, yes, 1066. If you know your math, the numbers work out. If you know your Bayeux Tapestry, you know that things didn’t work out so well for poor King Harold. British students once knew these things. Or did they? To trust Sellar and Yeatman, those who don’t immediately thrill in recognition when July 4, 1776, or July 4, 1863, are mentioned can feel a little better about themselves. And that makes 1066 and All That, still in print after 85 years, a book for our time.

Gregory McNamee is a contributing editor