David Starkey
The latter decades of the twentieth century saw academic history move steadily toward the television screen and the radio studio, as a generation of scholars carried serious historical inquiry into the popular arena. David Starkey, born on 3 January 1945 in Kendal, belongs to that current — a historian, author, university teacher, television presenter, and radio personality who has worked across those overlapping roles throughout his career.
Educated at Fitzwilliam College, Starkey built his practice as a historian writing and speaking in English for audiences well beyond the university lecture hall. His work as a television presenter and radio personality placed historical subjects before a broad public, while his roles as a university teacher and writer kept him connected to the more formal structures of academic life. That combination — scholarly engagement alongside sustained work in broadcast media — defined the shape of his professional activity.
Starkey's contributions were recognized through several distinctions. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire and received the Medlicott Medal, an honor awarded by the Historical Association. He holds fellowships in both the Society of Antiquaries and the Royal Historical Society, affiliations that place him within the institutional fabric of British historical and antiquarian scholarship. It is through that combination of academic standing and public-facing work — marked by those specific honors and fellowship memberships — that his career has been formally acknowledged.
Quotes by David Starkey
David Starkey's insights on:
I've written on Apple Macs since the early 80s - they're lovely to use and beautiful to look at.
Academics aren't paid very much, but as a single gay man I was never badly off. You don't have kids. You don't have a non-working wife's insatiable demand for shoes or wallpaper.
I was born a cripple, with two club feet, and mild polio in the left leg. I was in orthopaedic boots right through to my teenage years and, unfortunately, the fashion then was for light shoes. I discovered very quickly that I had a sharp mind and an exceedingly sharp tongue.
Not to invent yourself is to be false. To follow preordained rules is a profound betrayal of what it means to be human.
I started school in the autumn term of 1949 when there was a tomato glut. We had tomatoes in every form known to God, man or beast - and they were all equally detestable. When you pushed them with your fork, a warmish liquid spurted forth. It was rather like sort of bursting a boil.
My mother had been an incredibly bright kid but her family couldn't afford for her to stay in education. So she lived through me. She was a very remarkable woman and I owe a huge debt to her. She was unashamed about delighting in the fact that I was intelligent, and she drove and pushed me. She was also completely indifferent to popularity.
Churchill may have made some horrendous mistakes - Gallipoli, for one - but he had a sense of the profundity and integrity of the English experience. By contrast, Blair believes he excised the past in 1997, though what no one on the left seems to have realised is that his historic mission was to destroy the Labour party, not the Tories.