121 Quotes by David Starkey

Embrace the melancholic voice completely in the drafting stages, to explore it for all it’s worth. Then, in revision, privilege craft over pure feeling. Write the work that someone besides you will want to read.

Once a piece of writing gets to a moment where it’s not going to get much better than it already is, marinate it. If you still like the piece, send it out and see what others think. If not, it’s time to put it away and forget about it for a while.

We tend to think of the Norman Conquest as the turning point in the history of England. But the Saxon Conquest was even more important, since it created both the reality and the idea of England itself.

I've always had a naughty streak.

Unhappy marriages are big box office.

We have a lot to learn from the Tudor education system. It had diversity, placed rigorous demands on its students, and encouraged high achievement.

Listen to David Lammy, an archetypal successful black man. If you turn the screen off so that you are listening to him on radio you would think he was white.

It's one of the great mysteries to me how anybody who has ever believed in socialism can conceivably vote for Blair or New Labour, which is further to the right of any Tory government apart from that of John Major, and is taking privatisation into realms unheard-of.

Our education system has been taken over by bean counters and narrow-mindedness.