65 Facts About David Starkey

Dr David Robert Starkey was born on 3 January 1945 and is an English historian, radio and television presenter, with views that he describes as conservative.

David Starkey was born on 3 January 1945 in Kendal, Westmorland.

David Starkey is the only child of Robert Starkey and Elsie Lyon, Quakers who had married 10 years previously in Bolton, at a Friends meeting house.

David Starkey's father, the son of a cotton spinner, was a foreman in a washing-machine factory, while his mother followed in her father's footsteps and became a cotton weaver and later a cleaner.

David Starkey was raised in an austere and frugal environment of near-poverty, with his parents often unemployed for long periods of time; an environment which, he later stated, taught him "the value of money".

David Starkey is equivocal about his mother, describing her as both "wonderful", in that she helped develop his ambition, and "monstrous", intellectually frustrated and living through her son.

David Starkey wanted a creature, she wanted something she had made.

David Starkey blamed the episode on the unfamiliar experience of being in a "highly competitive environment".

David Starkey was fascinated by King Henry VIII, and his doctoral thesis focused on the Tudor monarch's inner household.

David Starkey's supervisor was Professor Sir Geoffrey Elton, an expert on the Tudor period.

David Starkey claimed that with age his mentor became "tetchy" and "arrogant".

In 1983, when Elton was awarded a knighthood, David Starkey derided one of his essays, Cromwell Redivivus, and Elton responded by writing an "absolutely shocking" review of a collection of essays David Starkey had edited.

David Starkey was a fellow at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge from 1970 to 1972.

David Starkey claimed to be an "excessively enthusiastic advocate of promiscuity", seeking to liberate himself from his mother, who strongly disapproved of his homosexuality.

David Starkey ended his 30-year career as a university teacher in 1998, later citing boredom and irritation with the administrative demands of modern academic life.

David Starkey had already achieved notoriety as a panellist on the BBC Radio 4 debate programme The Moral Maze, debating moral issues of the day alongside fellow panellists Rabbi Hugo Gryn, Sir Roger Scruton and the journalist Janet Daley since 1992.

David Starkey once attacked George Austin, the Archdeacon of York, over "his fatness, his smugness, and his pomposity", but after a nine-year stint on the programme he left, citing his boredom with being "Dr Rude" and its move to an evening slot.

David Starkey was a prosecution witness in the 1984 ITV programme The Trial of Richard III, whose jury acquitted the king of the murder of the Princes in the Tower on the grounds of insufficient evidence.

In 1984, David Starkey was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and in 1994 a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.

David Starkey was made an Honorary Fellow by his Cambridge College, Fitzwilliam College in 2006.

David Starkey has worked as curator on several exhibitions, including an exhibit in 2003 on Elizabeth I, following which he had lunch with her namesake, Elizabeth II.

On 25 June 2012, David Starkey gave his lecture 'Head of Our Morality: why the twentieth-century British monarchy matters' at The Marc Fitch Lectures.

David Starkey is a supporter of one-nation conservatism and believes that Victorian Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli was a great symbol of this.

David Starkey has written that Disraeli was "exotic, slippery and had a gift for language and phrase-making", drawing similarities with the rhetorical style of former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

David Starkey argues that the working classes need more explicit "nationalism" of the type demonstrated by Disraeli.

David Starkey believes that Disraelianism could strengthen the Anglo-American "conservative" alliance between US and the UK.

David Starkey blames the Callaghan administration for "blow[ing] the nation's finances".

David Starkey urged the party to re-engage with the working class rather than the "Guardian-reading middle class".

David Starkey prefers radical changes to the UK's constitution in line with the federal system used by the United States, although in an interview with Iain Dale he expressed his support for the monarchy, the Queen and Prince Charles.

David Starkey thinks the modern UK House of Commons has become a weak political institution and that it should return to its core value of being in defiance of state authority, as it was in its origin.

David Starkey believes the House too often gives way to the state, such as with the police being allowed to search the place without a warrant.

David Starkey was a supporter of the Tory Campaign for Homosexual Equality, and during one of many appearances on the BBC's Question Time he attacked Jeffrey Archer over his views on the age of homosexual consent.

David Starkey described Alex Salmond, then Scottish First Minister, as a "Caledonian Hitler" who thinks that "the English, like the Jews, are everywhere".

In June 2015 in an interview for The Sunday Times David Starkey compared the Scottish National Party with the Nazi Party.

David Starkey argues that the support for these ideas is what makes the UK different from the other EU member states which, as a result of the legacy of World War Two, tend to believe that nationalism is the cause of war and so joined the EU to prevent this.

David Starkey makes comparisons between Brexit and Henry VIII's split from Rome and the Reformation that followed.

David Starkey believes the Reformation sowed the seeds of Euroscepticism, particularly in England, and the nation's "semi-detached relationship with continental Europe".

David Starkey argues that "Remainers have somehow got the notion that we get our rights and liberties from Europe" but that, in fact, the English created their own values over their 800-year history.

David Starkey believes that Brexit was a reaffirmation of those values, but was nevertheless a "deeply irrational vote, not about what will make us better off, but rather, 'we'll be poorer, but we'll be free".

David Starkey has described the Catholic Church as being "riddled with corruption".

David Starkey believes the royal charter of rights Magna Carta is of great importance.

David Starkey has often spoken about it and has written about it most notably in his book Magna Carta: The True Story Behind the Charter.

David Starkey presented a television documentary on the subject David Starkey's Magna Carta, in which he argued that Magna Carta is a steadying force for constitutions.

David Starkey believes that Magna Carta is essential in keeping peace and constraints on the state and the public and says that it is this rather shaky but very important 800 year old document that has led to a "constitutional edifice" developing in the UK.

David Starkey often speaks about the political implications of Magna Carta in present-day politics.

David Starkey believes the modern UK state appears to be fragmenting and would be helped by the core principles of the charter with a new charter of liberties or a new William Marshal figure.

David Starkey attracted criticism in August 2011 for comments he made on BBC Two's Newsnight programme, in an episode discussing the 2011 England riots where he was a panel member alongside Owen Jones and Dreda Say Mitchell.

David Starkey said that when listening to the voice of David Lammy, whom he described as "an archetypal successful black man", one "would think he was white".

Also in The Telegraph, David Starkey argued his views had been distorted, he referred only to a "particular sort" of "black culture", and that the educationalists Tony Sewell and Katharine Birbalsingh supported the substance of his Newsnight comments.

David Starkey was accused by his fellow panelist writer Laurie Penny, of "playing xenophobia and national prejudice for laughs".

David Starkey received a large amount of criticism on Twitter for these comments.

In May 2023, speaking to GB News, David Starkey expressed his belief that prime minister Rishi Sunak was "not fully grounded in" British culture.

David Starkey later denied his comments were racist, saying he was referring to the prime minister being a "typical international liberal" with no interest in British "values".

On 30 June 2020, in a podcast interview with Darren Grimes, David Starkey spoke about the Black Lives Matter movement.

David Starkey had made the same point in a column eight days earlier except without the use of the word "damn".

David Starkey's comments were rebuffed by former Chancellor Sajid Javid, who said they were racist and that they serve as "a reminder of the appalling views that still exist", and they were widely described as racist in the media.

Canterbury Christ Church University, where David Starkey had been a visiting professor, removed him from that role in response to his "completely unacceptable" remarks.

Also on 3 July 2020, at a meeting of the Royal Historical Society, the society's council resolved that David Starkey should be asked to resign his fellowship with immediate effect.

On 6 July 2020, David Starkey resigned his fellowship of the Society of Antiquaries of London at the request of its council.

In regard to the allegations, David Starkey said that he did not "intend to stir up racial hatred and there was nothing about the circumstances of the broadcast which made it likely to do so" and that the investigation by the police was "neither proportionate nor in the best interests of preserving proper freedom of expression".

Grimes and David Starkey subsequently launched a formal complaint against the Metropolitan Police accusing them of being biased against them and acting in "deference" to the Black Lives Matter movement.

David Starkey stated that said conservatives had to defend the "uniqueness of the Anglo-American tradition" against "barbarians".

David Starkey lived for many years with his partner, James Brown, a publisher and book designer, until the latter's death in 2015.

David Starkey previously lived at John Spencer Square in Canonbury, Islington.

David Starkey was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2007 Birthday Honours for services to history.