Quotes from David Starkey

I believe young people need rules. They will respond to discipline.

In the early 60s, you read your essays to your supervisor rather than hand them in. I was both lazy and clever, and realised I didn't need to write essays at all, I could simply talk with some notes in front of me.

Family really meant almost nothing to me for many years but then, to my enormous surprise, when I met my partner James I found myself re-engaging and re-connecting. My mother died in 1977 but I got to know my father as an adult, and he got on well with James. A rapprochement with my whole family followed.

You could say that my life since has been a sustained act of luxurious rebellion.

If all the people of this country, black and white alike, are to enter fully into our national story, as I desperately hope they will, they must do so on terms of reciprocity.

I enjoy cooking, but stick to modern dishes.

To footnote properly takes time.

I've got no problem with getting history wrong for a purpose - Shakespeare often got things wrong for a reason. But it's the randomised arrogance of ignorance of 'The Tudors.' Shame on the BBC for producing it.

Freedom of speech wasn't won by being nice, it has been won by struggle with religion.

I was outrageous on the 'Moral Maze.' The closest I sailed to the wind was when I almost outed a most saintly Cardinal in a talk on homosexuality in public life.

Television is a performance, but apps actually reflect thought processes.

I was born a cripple, with two club feet, and mild polio in the left leg. I was in orthopaedic boots right through to my teenage years and, unfortunately, the fashion then was for light shoes. I discovered very quickly that I had a sharp mind and an exceedingly sharp tongue.