David Starkey

David Starkey made his name on the Tudor court, first as a Cambridge and LSE historian of Henry VIII's household and then on television, where a combative manner made him unusually visible for a constitutional historian. Six Wives, published in 2003 beside a Channel 4 series, reads Henry's marriages as politics rather than romance: each queen a faction, a treaty or a claim, and the household the place where power was actually exercised. Elizabeth and Monarchy did the same for later reigns. In an online interview recorded on 30 June 2020 he made a remark about slavery that his own institutions judged racist. Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge accepted the resignation of his honorary fellowship with immediate effect; Canterbury Christ Church removed his visiting professorship; HarperCollins called the remark abhorrent and said it would publish no more of his work. He said afterwards that the words had been deplorable.