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David Starkey

25 quotes

“[Shakespeare's date of birth (23 April) as a potential English national day] If we decide to go down this route of an English national day, it will mean we have become a feeble little country, just like the Scots and the Welsh and the Irish [...] We do not make a great fact about Shakespeare, like the Scots do about that deeply boring, provincial poet Burns, and we do not have national music like the awful bagpipe. The Scots and the Welsh are typical small nations with a romantic 19th-century-style nationalism.”
David Starkey (born 1945) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Comments during Question Time (23 April 2009), as cited in "TV historian sparks fury of a nation with 'feeble little Scotland' jibe" The Scotsman (24 April 2009)
“[On Enoch Powell's 'rivers of blood' speech] His prophesy [sic, read 'prophecy'] was absolutely right in one sense. The Tiber did not foam with blood but flames lambent, they wrapped around Tottenham and wrapped around Clapham. But it wasn't inter-community violence. This is where he was absolutely wrong. [Referring to another participant in the discussion, Owen Jones, author of Chavs: the Demonisation of the Working Classes] What has happened is that a substantial section of the chavs that you wrote about have become black.”
David Starkey (born 1945) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The whites have become black. A particular sort of violent destructive, nihilistic gangster culture has become the fashion and black and white boys and girls operate in this language together. This language which is wholly false, which is this Jamaican patois that has been intruded in England and that is why so many of us have this sense of literally of a foreign country.”
David Starkey (born 1945) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Comments during a discussion on the BBC's Newsnight (12 August 2011) concerning the 2011 England riots, as cited in "David Starkey claims 'the whites have become black'" The Guardian (13 August 2011).
“If you think about it, Alex Salmond is a democratic Caledonian Hitler, although some would say Hitler was more democratically elected.”
David Starkey (born 1945) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“English national identity is too important to be left to the loons of the BNP and the EDL [English Defence League].”
David Starkey (born 1945) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Comments during a Bow Group debate on the teaching of English history in schools, as cited in "Historian David Starkey denounced over 'Hitler' jibe at Alex Salmond" The Scotsman (20 April 2012)
“The BBC is in many ways wonderful, but it is not good at recognising when a programme has come to the end of its natural life. Programmes are like weeds – they spring up, grow quickly, and then should be allowed to die quickly. I think the BBC needs to be much more adventurous. I am horrified by this appetite they have for relaunches and remakes. They should be thinking about doing something new.”
David Starkey (born 1945) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview by Tim Walker, "David Starkey: It's time to let Newsnight die", The Telegraph (10 July 2014)
“[The governments "British values" should include] queuing, drunkenness, nostalgia, loving pets, self-loathing, wit and eccentricity.”
David Starkey (born 1945) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We're at great risk of dying of niceness [...] I hate niceness.”
David Starkey (born 1945) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Freedom of speech wasn’t won by being nice, it has been won by struggle with religion.”
David Starkey (born 1945) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at a teachers' conference on British values at Brighton College, as cited in "Real British values are 'drunkenness and self-loathing', David Starkey says" The Telegraph (29 January 2015)
“[Advocating for 'leave' in the then forthcoming EU membership referendum] We have a very large trade deficit with Europe, we have a decent trade balance with the rest of the world. Is Europe going to cut off its nose to spite its face? It seems to me so infinitely unlikely. There's no risk. There would be a risk if we were running a German-style trade surplus with Europe. But we're not. The problem of our leaving Europe is a problem for the Germans and not us.”
David Starkey (born 1945) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From an interview as cited in "David Starkey: why Ed Miliband is 'poison' and David Cameron 'muddle-headed'" The Telegraph (10 April 2015)
“What are the points of comparison? Well, we have a political movement that has a single historic explanation for why your country is facing such terrible oppression; it’s either Versailles or the Treaty of the Union. You have a particular group of people who are responsible for this; it is either the English or the Jews.”
David Starkey (born 1945) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You have as a symbol the twisted cross: the saltire or the swastika. You have a passionate belief in economic self-sufficiency: known by the Nazis as autarky and the Scots as oil. And also you have the propensity of your elderly and middle-aged male supporters to expose their knees.”
David Starkey (born 1945) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[The English, particularly some on the left, are] incapable of recognising that this is national socialism. And the nationalism is much more important than the socialism, as it was in Germany. The socialism is a very fragile, superficial thing. The nationalism is very real.”
David Starkey (born 1945) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview cited in "Starkey rages against the 'Nazi' SNP" The Sunday Times (14 June 2015)
“History is about arrogance, vanity and vapidity — who better than me to present it?”
David Starkey (born 1945) first seen 2017 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in Patrick Kidd, "Theresa’s new avenger look", The Sunday Times (9 May 2017)
“Slavery was not genocide otherwise there wouldn't be so many damn blacks in Africa or Britain would there? An awful lot of them survived.”
David Starkey (born 1945) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The entire machinery of academic promotion and academic endorsement and of academic advancement has been taken over, and therefore heretics like me have to be routed out. It's very similar to what happened to German universities under Hitler. The group that is most vulnerable, I'm afraid, are intellectuals. Right over the country, you have these kinds of implantations of Metropolitan wokeness. The universities are acting rather like Covid spreaders, these are the super spreaders. These people wear a cloak of impenetrable virtue. We've been here before. This is Robespierre.”
David Starkey (born 1945) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I've always had a naughty streak. I've always challenged authority. I'm on the right but it's kind of ironic on the right. I've studied kings, so I’m very aware of the feet of clay of authority.”
David Starkey (born 1945) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The determination is to replace the Holocaust with slavery. In other words, this is why Jews are under such attack from the left, there’s jealousy, fundamentally. There is jealousy of the moral primacy of the Holocaust and a determination to replace it with slavery.”
David Starkey (born 1945) first seen 2023 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at the National Conservatism conference, London (17 May 2023), as cited in "Left-wing wants to replace Holocaust with Black Lives Matter, says David Starkey" The Independent (17 May 2023).
“By their fruits you shall know them." I always thought Jesus was a rotten theologian, but he is jolly good at politics.”
David Starkey (born 1945) first seen 2024 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Comments at PopCon 2024.
“In fact, they go so far as to differentiate their status between inner scholarii – who have been inducted into the mysteries as [[Geoffrey Elton|[Geoffrey] Elton]]'s own students – and discipuli, an outer and less privileged band who have only sat at his feet, without the benefit of formal instruction. Long ago, in my own very happy days in Elton's seminar, we used to divide the group into Eltonians and Eltonettes. These were roughly to be equated with 'us' and 'them', English and Americans. Eltonians, we thought, grasped the essence of what Elton was trying to do without needing to imitate the style; Eltonettes reproduced the form to the last perfection of pedantry, but caught nothing of the substance. There is too much in this volume that confirms our arrogance.”
David Starkey (born 1945) first seen 1984 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Floreat Eltona", London Review of Books, Vol. 6 No. 1 (19 January 1984)
“The church made a lethal mistake when Michael Ramsey was appointed archbishop by Harold Macmillan. It rediscovered Christianity, and that was fatal. Until that point, the archbishops had been the high priests of English Shinto: in other words, the church's job was really just to [enable us to] worship the monarchy and, by extension, ourselves. That was sensible. But then it gets cluttered up with all this nonsense about Christianity. The absolute disaster will be if someone like John Sentamu [the doctrinally conservative archbishop of York] is appointed. Catastrophe! The church has got to choose between being a national church or an international communion. It can't be both.”
David Starkey (born 1945) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview by Rachel Cooke, "David Starkey: 'I can be a bit harsh'", The Guardian (22 April 2012)
“There’s no point in arguing against globalisation or Western civilisation – they are all products of it. We are all products of it [...] The honest teaching of the British empire is to say it was the first key stage of world globalisation. It was probably the most important moment in human history and it is still with us. As for the idea that slavery is this terrible disease that dare not speak its name. It only dare not speak its name because we settled it 200 years ago. Do you know what, we had Catholic emancipation at pretty much the exact same time we got rid of slavery – in the 1830s - we don’t go on about that.”
David Starkey (born 1945) first seen 2020 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Comments on the Reasoned UK YouTube channel in an interview with Darren Grimes (June 2020), as cited in "David Starkey under fire for saying 'slavery wasn't genocide' because 'so many damn blacks' survived" The Independ…
“In the name of acceptance, of broadening, of anti-discrimination, we're at the risk of undoing what is our only claim to survive in the future. The only thing that's made these little islands what they are is this astonishing burst of creativity of the last 500 years. It is our individualism, it's our bloody mindedness, our awkwardness, our refusal to fit into categories that has made us, dare I use the word, great. And if we lose that we are lost, we have absolutely nothing else. The world that my enemies are trying to create is one that we will just go down the tubes, we are finished. I believe in going down fighting.”
David Starkey (born 1945) first seen 2020 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview, as cited in "David Starkey: 'Our universities have become woke superspreaders'" The Telegraph (12 September 2020)
“[Responding to a suggestion Prime minister Rishi Sunak appeared to be "detached, or at least semi-detached, from this coronation" from journalist Andrew Pierce] Invisible. I think one of the reasons that I think a lot has gone wrong, for example, why parliament has not been properly represented at the coronation of a parliamentary monarchy, is because the government isn't interested in the constitution. The prime minister, the man of immense talent, of extraordinary skill, but really, not fully grounded in our culture [...] I know that's a difficult and controversial thing to say, but I think it's true. And, again, this coronation is going to highlight far too much our differences rather than what unites us.”
David Starkey (born 1945) first seen 2023 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview on GB News (4 May 2023), as cited in "David Starkey says PM uninterested in coronation as he is ‘not grounded in our culture’" The Guardian (4 May 2023)
“Movements like critical race theory and Black Lives Matter are not what they pretend to be. They are attempts at destroying the entire legitimacy of the Western political and cultural tradition. The idea that they are there to defend black lives is a preposterous notion. They do not care about black lives, they only care about the symbolic destruction of white culture. We have to be absolutely clear about this. The narrative of Black Lives Matter is that Western culture and Anglo-American culture in particular are fundamentally morally defective, they are characterised by the mark of Cain and their strategy is to do exactly what was done to German culture because of Nazism and the Holocaust.”
David Starkey (born 1945) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source