听播客学英语 216 安东尼·霍尔国王（在线收听） |
In 1931, the King of England came to Birmingham. He stood on a soapbox in Bull Ring Market and spoke to his people. Actually, he wasn’t the King of England at all. His name was Anthony Hall. He had been born in London, and had been an ambulance driver in Flanders during the First World War. Later, he became a policeman. He claimed that he was descended from Thomas Hall, an illegitimate son of King Henry VIII. (Henry VIII was one of the most colourful figures in English history. He had seven wives – at different times, of course – and ran what we today would call a police-state. He was responsible for separating the church in England from the Roman Catholic Church.) Anthony Hall therefore claimed to be the rightful King of England. He told the crowds who gathered to listen to him that, when he became King, he would pay off the National Debt and build millions of new homes for working class people.
Some of the people who heard him just found him amusing. They did not take him seriously. But others listened to the ugly side of what Anthony Hall said. For Hall was violently anti-German. He claimed that King George V and all the British Royal Family were German imposters who should be thrown out of the country or executed. (The British Royal family came originally of course from Germany). Most British people in the 1930’s had nothing against their King, but many had bitter memories of the First World War. They listened to Hall because he spoke against Germany.
The government have recently made public some papers about Anthony Hall. They show that the government and King George V wanted to silence Hall, but were not sure how to do so. They tried to have him sent to a lunatic asylum, but this failed because Hall was not insane. However, he solved the problem himself. On 12 August 1931, King Anthony Hall mounted his soapbox in Birmingham for the last time, to bid farewell to his people. He was never heard of again, and died in 1947. |
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