My biggest poetic influences are probably 20th-century British and Irish poets. So I suppose I'm always listening for the music I associate with that poetry, the telling images, the brevity. I want to hear it in my own work as… — David Starkey Copy Share Image
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. — David Starkey Copy Share Image
I was born in a council house, my father left school at the age of 11, had his teeth out without anaesthetic at the… — David Starkey Copy Share Image
I was a complete and typical only child. I was bookish, and sport was out of the question anyway. I had read all of… — David Starkey Copy Share Image
Compare the scale and magnifcence of Versailles with St James's - the brick-built hovel in which the 18th-century kings of England lived. What was… — David Starkey Copy Share Image
Churchill may have made some horrendous mistakes - Gallipoli, for one - but he had a sense of the profundity and integrity of the… — David Starkey Copy Share Image
We have this extraordinarily unbalanced constitution, in which we have an elected dictatorship of the prime minister. — David Starkey Copy Share Image
Historians have become far too precious. Their work has become ever more specialised and, as they steadily lose the context of their studies, they… — David Starkey Copy Share Image
Floating the idea that every kid in Brixton can become a whizkid at information technology is dishonest. — David Starkey Copy Share Image
What I love doing is creating a room, with attractive paintings and colours and furnishings - very much my mother. — David Starkey Copy Share Image