David Starkey interviewed
Above: David Starkey at home in Kent
Above: David Starkey at work
Above: David Starkey in his Kent garden
A chance read of The Telegraph one Saturday led historian and TV star David Starkey to his current home in the village of Barham, where he has lived with his partner James and their ‘luxo-pooch’ Ledger, a handsome chocolate brown Labrador, since April 2005.
“Kent is a complete accident,” he tells me over a cup of tea in the kitchen. “We had looked in Norfolk, Dorset, everywhere, and had really thought of France - I came very near to buying two properties just outside Poitiers.
“There was a piece in The Telegraph, which we don’t normally read, on houses with Agas – you may have noticed ours, which is the same size, shape and colour as a London double-decker bus – and there was a photograph of this huge Aga and a tiny postage stamp-sized photograph of the façade of the house.
“I said to James, that looks jolly nice, he was free on the following Monday, I was free and the people who were selling it were free. We came down, looked at it, had lunch in the Black Robin and decided to buy it.”
If you want to practise at originality, be a bit of an awkward customer as a child
The decision was a calculated one – it was within the right sort of radius from London, where David still has a house in Islington. And the style of the house – which they believe belonged to the owner of the local brickfields in the 1830s – suited a couple with different tastes.
“I prefer a bit of grandeur and James prefers a bit of cottage. This house enabled us to do both,” says David. “That was what struck us about it – you could lead two very different sorts of lives here, which is what we do.
“If I have a rush of grandeur to the head, we can use the drawing room or the formal dining room, or we curl up in the snug or in the kitchen.”
While the couple are spending the bulk of their time in Kent, initially they kept an open mind about where ‘home’ was. David explains: We weren’t sure what kind of welcome we would get – we’ve been met with the proverbial open arms – but I can still remember standing in the garden and saying to James, well, if they start throwing stones, at least the walls are high.”
So what’s it like swapping cosmopolitan Islington for rural Kent? “Barham has one shop, a post office-cum-village store, and I’m sure they wouldn’t mind me saying, it’s hardly a gourmet experience,” replies David.
“But on the other hand, Canterbury, which is just down the road, has got wonderful shopping and The Goods Shed is one of those wonderful institutions of Kent, both for shopping and as a restaurant. It’s exactly what should happen to historic buildings.”
It’s all a far cry from David’s rather more humble origins. Born the only child of poor Quaker parents in Kendal, he suffered from painful physical disabilities. “I was the classic child who was always called professor at school,” he says.
“I wore spectacles and had the combination of polio and two club feet, but I was also a product of those triumphant days of surgery that followed the Second World War. I had a remarkable surgeon who was very fond of me and loathed my mother – thought she was interfering and a nuisance.”
In the early to mid-1990’s, I was what you’d describe as ‘all-purpose media tart’
He adds: “It’s useful being a bit different when you are a child – anything novel and original is the product of daring to be a bit different. So if you want to practise at originality, be a bit of an awkward customer as a child. But looking back, I do wonder how my parents put up with me.”
David insists he owes everything to his mother, Elsie Lyon, who he describes as a “monster” but also a passionate believer in David, in herself and in education.
“Mine wasn’t a boring education,” he says. “My primary school was one of the first real liberal schools (I still have my prize for environmental studies, dated 1956), then my grammar school was completely different, a traditional boys’ grammar, with teachers who were academically interested in their studies.
“I did a huge amount of acting at that school, which has stood me in good stead, and we also had a splendid tradition of debating and public speaking. It was the model of what a rounded education should be and, of course, all these things came together in my life.”
David won a scholarship to read history at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, of which he is a Fellow, then, from 1972 to 1998, taught history at the London School of Economics. During this period, he embarked on his career in television, largely due to one of his former students asking him appear on a programme presented by Russell Harty called Behave Yourself – apparently it was the pioneering reality show.
“To make the thing semi-respectable, there was a panel of so-called experts, including a social psychologist, an animal behaviourist, the then-director of the Museum of Mankind, and me,” explains David.
“It became this extraordinary late-night hit and was regarded as being far too extreme for mainstream TV, so it was only broadcast in the Granada region – but we had something like 98 per cent audience share. I have never been as absolutely famous as I was in that summer in Manchester.”
From that appearance, everything else stemmed. David did a very early history series with the then-brand new Channel 4, called This Land of England, which he followed with the televised Trial of Richard III, “in which I was my most completely outrageous self,” he says, with relish.
“There was a very strange QC, who was “a shit in a silk stocking”, as Napoleon said of his foreign minister. We had this tremendous battle, and the jury hated me so much that we lost the case – on the other hand, I made such an impact that it founded my career, so win some, lose some,” he laughs.
“Nancy Banks-Smith, The Guardian’s TV critic, said it was wasn’t like human conflict, it was more like a scene from The Jungle Book between Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, the mongoose (me), and the rattlesnake. My friends pointed out that a mongoose was simply a rat with attitude.”
This new-found fame led to BBC Radio 4’s debating programme, The Moral Maze, on which David was a ruthless interrogator of ‘witnesses’ examining contemporary moral questions. “In its early days, it was a must-listen programme, and an agenda-setting one,” says David. “Tory-ism was collapsing; it was difficult to find any right-of-centre voices in the media, so the programme helped them in spades. It was a very interesting exercise.”
David says he has been very lucky in having had three distinct careers. “First, an academic career, then with The Moral Maze in the 1990s I was what you’d describe as ‘all-purpose media tart’, and then this strange transmogrification into one of Britain’s best-loved historians.
“The ‘rudest man in Britain’ tag was given to me by The Daily Mail, so it’s all rather amusing to be the ‘cuddly historian’ now. It’s all to do with putting a bit of weight on and starting to wear woollens in public!” he chuckles.
David has carved himself a niche as the doyen of TV history, and programmes such as Channel 4’s Monarchy, which chronicled the history of English Kings and Queens from the Anglo-Saxon era onwards, have proved accessible and popular. But wasn’t it a difficult transfer, from academia to the media?
I finally managed to do the Reformation in what I think was 98 words. It concentrates the mind wonderfully – like hanging
“The whole business of TV presenting is the most bizarre thing in the world,” he admits. “You look at this large blank square of glass and address it as an intimate friend.
“But I never had much of a problem. I’ve been a teacher professionally for the whole of my career, so I’m used to standing up in front of a class. I did my first lecture at Cambridge at the ripe age of 22, and I’ve been doing it ever since. When I finally gave up teaching full time in the 1990s, I was jaded – you heard echoes in your head of things you’d said 20 years ago.
“I got bored and not a little disillusioned and the combination of TV and real writing was exactly what I wanted.”
A prolific author, David is currently working on a two-volume book on Henry VIII to coincide with next year’s celebrations of the 500th anniversary of the monarch’s ascension to the throne. There will be a major new TV series, which David will present.
“Presenting can be quite stressful – you work long, mad hours – and most of the time I was lucky with my directors,” he tells me. “My favourite director on the Monarchy series was the son of the former Archbishop of Canterbury, James Runcie, who was absolutely terrific and believed in the importance of frequent glasses of red wine. We found ourselves getting on extremely well.
“The series was very extraordinary, you became utterly familiar with the inside of royal palaces, you film in close proximity to the most beautiful things and paintings, and at the same time you’re working – and what everyone forgets is that you’ve got your back to these wonderful things – everyone else gets to enjoy them. You’re usually looking at this bloody lens and the cameraman on the other side of it.”
David says the real test of television is compression: “An hour-long documentary, which in TV is virtually War and Peace, is just over 5,000 words. It’s tiny.
“I had my first introduction to the art when I did an early series on Henry VIII. I managed to get the Reformation down to 145 words – and you not only have to do that, but you have to walk at the right pace, usually in a very strange curve called the ‘banana’ because of the depth of field in television lenses, you have to look meaningfully at the camera, and you have to look off camera at the right time. “Anyway, I did all these things without fluffing, looked at my director with an air of dog-like devotion, expecting a pat on the head, and instead there was this look of sublime boredom on his face as he said, do you realise that was a minute?
“A minute is roughly the length of a Dickens novel in terms of television, so I was like a naughty schoolboy, sent away to reduce it by half. I then finally managed to do the Reformation in what I think was 98 words. It concentrates the mind wonderfully – like hanging.
“I found having performed this exercise of absolute reduction has influenced my writing a lot and has led to a very spare, tighter style and to much tighter construction. It helps keep the reader on side – they don’t want the vast, traditional chapter any more.”
Back in Kent, David, who is vice-president of the Canterbury Festival, is doing a talk at the Houses of God exhibition at Canterbury Cathedral (see also page xxx). “We’ve tried to get involved locally,” he explains, “and that’s one of the pleasures, getting involved with local people and local events.
“I am no Christian, as is well known, but Cathedrals are among the most important buildings and institutions in Britain, so I find myself particularly drawn to Canterbury – it’s magical.”
David says that one of the great moments of his life was the honorary degree given to him by the University of Kent. “Entering the nave of Canterbury Cathedral, by the west door to the sound of trumpets, was like going to heaven. Not that I ever shall!”
And how does he feel about his new homeland? “I have been delighted by Kent. First of all, the landscape and this extraordinary wooded, gently rolling countryside that you get around here, it’s an intimate landscape, and yet a relatively empty one.
“Kent has also got this wonderful genuine mixed farming, which means you get incredibly good local food and drink. And you have this astonishing history of wonderful houses, and I am lucky enough to live in one of them.
“I’m very fortunate that what I do is something that, most of the time, I very much enjoy and there isn’t really very much distinction between job pleasure and play. There’s no point doing it otherwise.”