David Starkey Quotes

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David Starkey

Profession : Historian

Birth : January 3, 1945

I mean, really, compared to a senior civil servant, I'm very modestly paid!

David Starkey

My mother scrubbed other people's floors for a living, and I remember vividly her worrying about being down to the last half crown for the week. And I was aware of it, and absolutely determined that under no circumstances would that ever happen to me.

David Starkey

What I love doing is creating a room, with attractive paintings and colours and furnishings - very much my mother.

David Starkey

Historians have become far too precious. Their work has become ever more specialised and, as they steadily lose the context of their studies, they end up knowing more and more about less and less. It's a malaise that has now infected A-levels and GCSEs.

David Starkey

The notion that you can duff up a country for three months, pacify it for a bit longer and then miraculously transform it into a liberal democracy is just ludicrous. You might achieve some kind of democracy: it's the liberal bit I take issue with.

David Starkey

I'm not a delicate man.

David Starkey

In the early 60s, you read your essays to your supervisor rather than hand them in. I was both lazy and clever, and realised I didn't need to write essays at all, I could simply talk with some notes in front of me.

David Starkey

The notion of public service has effectively been abandoned. Every political party now buys into business values, and into the notion that by definition business must run things more efficiently.

David Starkey

We have this extraordinarily unbalanced constitution, in which we have an elected dictatorship of the prime minister.

David Starkey

The Tudors' is terrible history with no point. It's wrong for no purpose.

David Starkey

I've got no problem with getting history wrong for a purpose - Shakespeare often got things wrong for a reason. But it's the randomised arrogance of ignorance of 'The Tudors.' Shame on the BBC for producing it.

David Starkey

My parents were Quaker, and they were part of that old self-improving working class.

David Starkey

My father was a trained engineer who got his qualifications at night school.

David Starkey

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.

David Starkey

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.

David Starkey

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.

David Starkey

I was outrageous on the 'Moral Maze.' The closest I sailed to the wind was when I almost outed a most saintly Cardinal in a talk on homosexuality in public life.

David Starkey

I've written on Apple Macs since the early 80s - they're lovely to use and beautiful to look at.

David Starkey

I organise my work in the form of a daily diary. Each chapter is strictly chronological but is also monothematic - say, a war, a set of peace negotiations, a joust.

David Starkey