Learn all the 67 English Monarchs from Offa to Charles III, plus, some Roman Emperors by

It is a fresh but sunny day, and your detector has gone “bip,bip”- you unearth a coin, but which king, and how old might it be? Wouldn’t be great to ID the king and know how many hundreds of years old it is?

I know you can look itup later, or ask an expert, butknowing the Monarchs of England yourself would be good to know, and if like me you are getting on a bit – learning new things even in your 70’s can help your brain stave off Alzheimer's etc. Keeping your brain active can benefit everyone. Plus, it might come in handy at the local pub quiz and in my case surprise my grandchildren that I can learn such things.

If you would like to learn all of the English monarchs from Offa to Charles III, then I would strongly recommend Ed Cooke’s excellent book, called “Remember, Remember” whereyou willlearn to train yourmemory to neverforget the 67 Kings and Queens of England (before No.68 Charles III, as the book was written in 2008). Also, it includes learning all the US presidents & all of the British Prime Ministers, if you really want to show off!

Dr Phil Williams BA PhD

a bucketof warm, slimy, smelly Offal being poured over him in bedbyanangrywarlord.Hewakesup shaking,andwiping the offal from his eyes looks at the Mercedes bedside clock it reads 7:57 and he remembers today he is going to learn about all the Kings and Queens of England. By the way, 757 is the date Offa became king and the Mercedes reminds us he ruled the kingdom of Mercia. So we have met our first

Ed, who is a Grandmaster of Memory, uses a memory technique called the journey method. It takes you on an easy to remember journey through a house, then via some buses, a school, a sports field and finally ends with a race to Buckingham Palace. To make any event rememberable, Ed has created a funny picture that is outrageously funny, silly, colourful, loud, bright, and smelly etc. The journey is acted out by a school boy. At the start, he is suddenly woken up by king. The boy then goes to the bathroom to clean up, and along the landing, there is a small helicopter flying above him making a loud whirring noise – it is aWessex helicopter, which remindshim thathe is now in the kingdom of Wessex. The journey continues in the bathroom, where he meets the next 5 kings of Wessex and so on. Each king is made rememberable by placing them in a funny easy to remember picture etc. with action and funny circumstances along the journey so you can recall each stop, associated place and monarch.

Once you have learnt all the monarchs, Ed also has another chapter giving a bit more information on each monarch –again he uses picture association to allow you to remember this.

Now I personally also wanted to know the dates when each monarch reigned, so I have used another memory technique called the Major Memory Method. In this method, I have used the 2 last numbers of the date of each end of reign and to remember them using this method. Each date is represented by an object, animal etc. which kills the monarch in question by squashing, knocking off their head, smothering them etc. Making this act as violent, noisy, smelly, sexy etc. will help retain the picture in your mind. Table 1, shows the basis of the Master Memory method, where numbers 0-9 are given a constant letter, and a word is then made-up using vowels, letters h, w and y to fill in the spaces between the constants.

You can use this method to remember other numbers like a pin number- for example say your bank card pin was 3591 you could make up two things, one for 35 (ML) and another for 91 (BD) – so MoLe and BeD – so picture a giant mole in bed blocking your way to the cash machine. You’ll see the mole first, and then the bed – giving you 35,91.

For example, Offa dies in 796 – now we should remember it started at 757 (just before 8 O’clock, so we have the 7 hundreds in our mind but now we need to remember 96, and using the Major Memory method where 9=P or B and 6=G we could use PiG, PeG, BuG, BoG etc. However, an animal or person is a good choice as it can add action to the picture. So, we could image Offa being squashed by a giant pig (getting revenge for taking his fellow pigs’ offal). Table 2 lists the first 10 kings with their dates and memory peg for the end date, and a brief note.

* = Note: dates are 1000 years from World War I (end +1), that is why in Ed’s book there is a picture of a solider on the ‘Head Mound’ (= Ed Mund)

Ed’s book makes excellent reading, and after a few read thro’s you’ll be able to recite the order of the kings and queens both forward and backward, because the journey method links all the monarchs together in order of their rule. Ed’s book is available on Amazon, and used copies often appear on eBay.

Now, let us move our attention to the Romans. Again, I have used some bits of both memory methods mentioned above to remember these. Table 3 shows the dates and memory peg for the end date. The journey is based around the rooms of my house where I have itemised 10 objects in each room (first item is always the door of a room, and the 10th item is always the light fitting). You could do the same for your house. For example, if you wanted to learn say the first 20 emperors, you’ll need to find 2 rooms and you if you used my idea of1st is a door and the10th item is a light fitting, then you only need to find/remember another 8 items in each room. Best to go around each room clockwise, starting at the door, etc. Then peg each emperor to each item in turn in a vivid memory picture. This is part of another memory technique called the Memory Palace. By going around your room, you can remember the order of each Emperor either forward or backwards. By the way, you could tell your children about these memory methods to help learn things at school, and as it is fun, it might aid their education (check out YouTube and Google them for more information).

Back to the Romans. To start the story, you can image a scene outside your house; it is snowing and very cold. A well-known roman leader is being very nosily stabbed to death (this is of course Julius Caesar), before him is a big thermometer showing -27 deg C (with a sNaKe wrapped around it, N=2 and K=7). This is the year 27 BC when our 1st Emperor starts his reign. Table 3, shows each emperor, in which room, then which object I use to associate the picture with, the emperor’s name, his memory picture, the date of his demise (AD) and it’s memory peg.

So taking the 1st Emperor, we can imagine, on our front door is an emperor wearing a big colourful tie (1st Emperor) and holding a calendar page for the month of August. This reminds us that the 1st emperor is Augustus and the DooR tellsushedied in 14 AD (imaginethedoorfallsoffitshinges and squashes Augustus).

The second emperor, looks like Captain James Tiberius Kirk in suN (2nd Emperor) glasses from Star Trek. He is tying beer (tie-beer-us) bottles on the curtains, but they are going up in smelly, thick black sMoKe killing Tiberius in 37 AD, and so on. You can even smell his flesh burning! You can use the memory pegs to create your own imaginative memory pictures – making it as vivid, silly, colourful, smelly, big, loud, sexy etc. – the more ridiculous the better to help stay in our memory. The pictures don’t have to be exactly correct, but enough to trigger the required memory connection. Please create your own pictures, and if you can draw them out then please do send them to the author, so they could be shared on Facebook etc.

So put your imagination together, make up some marvellous pictures and have fun.

If you would like to get a full list of my 67 monarchs with dates etc. or the 87 Imperial Roman Emperors then email me at doctorpw@hotmail.com or catch me on the Facebook group at “Happy Detecting”.

Thanks to Ed Cooke and Penguin books for allowing me to use ED’s pictures from his book.