A personal note is unavoidable here. David Starkey is known to the nation as the television historian, heir to AJP Taylor and his notes-free lectures, who has made the vivid Tudors – sex, violence and litigation – acceptable as a sort of upmarket EastEnders. But he was merely a distinguished historian at the London School of Economics until I invented him!
During the early years of The Moral Maze, the producer listed the specific talents needed in a new panel member. “We want a Conservative, not particularly extreme, but combative, maybe a bit rude…” Without drawing breath, I said: “David Starkey.” I recalled someone who, a couple of years back, had won and lost a TV mock trial of Richard III. He had demolished the “didn’t do it” case against Richard’s involvement in the murder of the princes in the Tower of London before adding: “But I don’t expect you dear little people to understand that.” The dear little people promptly acquitted Richard. The rest is celebrity, but he is a good historian.
One thing is for sure. He has written the book we need. A generation of educationalists have very nearly done for decent history, not to mention replacing education itself with educationalism. Beyond which, three succeeding and philistine New Labour Education Secretaries have treated History the way they have Languages, as elitist dross. When a junior minister, doing a charity Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, not only doesn’t know who came after Henry VIII, but hazards the surrealist notion, “Henry VII,” civilisation needs this book to sell, needs it even though it will make David Starkey even richer.
It is about kings and queens, battles, treaties and politics, old fashioned history, which is to say the absolute pre-condition of understanding secular trends, tendencies, interesting nuances and the longue durée. Read this beautifully organised compendium of the facts. Firstly, you will enjoy it and secondly, you won’t invade Iraq. Great tracts concern invasions which, discounting William the Conqueror, either failed or went on at ruinous length. You will also learn about the Anglo-Saxons, their culture and their kingdoms, the significance of Sutton Hoo and the newfound Staffordshire Hoard. He sets out the crude savagery of 8th century Offa and shows why 9th century Alfred, illiterate turned polymath, taker of infinite pains in desperate resistance and effective creator of a state, was a hero, unlike so many heroes.
Across the High Middle Ages, Starkey stresses the individual who shaped events – terribly passé and essential. The personalities are here: Henry II, driving intelligence and thus bringer of coherent law; Edward I, great king, also fearful brute, who actually invented hanging, drawing and quartering for treason, in this case fighting back after he had invaded Wales; Edward II – disliked hunting, preferred boat-building and non-violent sports – obvious non-starter. The Normans liked blinding people and the Conqueror’s Harrowing of the North was up to Japanese standards during World War II. Per contra, I hadn’t realised how Stephen of Blois, brave soldier and capable general, fell down on the business of killing people afterwards, too nice for the job – unlike his enemy in a desolating civil war, Matilda, a lady clean out of Les Dawson. Stephen was the nearest thing to a nice Norman, and much good it did him. Starkey is distinctly Darwinian, acknowledging realpolitik and the need to be vicious bastard enough to win. Victor of Agincourt is the point of his Henry V, not the burner alive of Lollards unsound on the Real Presence. But then religion comes in all the time. Only William Rufus couldn’t be bothered with God. “Openly irreligious” says Starkey who comes down in his favour as a brisk doer of business like bouncing the Scots out of the north.
Religion means archbishops which frequently means lower class politicians there on merit. Witness Roger of Salisbury, Thomas Beckett and, later, Thomas Wolsey, every man a rough-hewn Jeeves, getting serious power at the elbow of a full-dress royal. Also, while the prospect of getting an English Pope has generally been on a rough par with winning the World Cup, we got our 1966 in 1154 with Nicholas Breakspear from Hertfordshire. As Adrian IV, he awarded us the God-endorsed right to conquer Ireland. Religion also means that penny dreadful of a century, the 16th. But instead of confining himself to God, blood and divorce courts, Starkey picks on an episode which brilliantly illustrates the change of outlook which is history working. From exile, Bishop John Ponet, appalled by Bloody Mary’s burning of his friend Archbishop Cranmer, wrote a Shorte Treatise of Politike Power. Royal supremacy was conditional. Kings and queens were only as good as their deeds. The newfangled printing press in a foreign city, Strasbourg, told Mary and her successors that Psalm 118 – “It is better to trust in the Lord than to trust in princes” – applied to them. They were humans only and, for wrongdoing, they might be deposed. He was starting something.
The effectiveness of this book is not confined to Starkey’s specialist territory. The Anglo-Saxon and Medieval centuries have been set out with a clarity and organisation which makes them straightforwardly accessible. He is, though, a touch cavalier about the 18th, through which he moves at a slightly distracted speed. Too hard on George I, he gives no credit for that moderate Lutheran’s distaste for Anglican intolerance or his rescue of four of the Scots lords condemned for the 15. You wouldn’t know that this insensitive German had plans, discouraged by ministers, for giving up his personal status in Hanover to concentrate on the English throne.
Robert Walpole gets credit for “financial skills” over the South Sea Bubble where his real and saving skills were those of benign time-wasting while rage cooled down. Sir Robert’s own edge-of-crash instructions to buy were constructively left in a locked drawer by his man of business, Robert Jacombe. That orating ego, the Elder Pitt, is approved for foresights and managements in the Seven Years’ War which specialist sources have been dismantling over the years. But it’s only the 18th century, the rest of them are excellent. This is the thorough, readable work of instruction to fill the current void of student knowledge.
