Quotes from David Starkey

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.

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

We tend to think of the Norman Conquest as the turning point in the history of England. But the Saxon Conquest was even more important, since it created both the reality and the idea of England itself.

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

Historians have become far too precious. Their work has become ever more specialised and, as they steadily lose the context of their studies, they end up knowing more and more about less and less. It's a malaise that has now infected A-levels and GCSEs.

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.

High malice is almost inherent in the profession of historian.

The notion that you have to hold something in your head seems to have been forgotten. It is an absurdity that children learn to investigate topics without having dates in their heads, or the facts.

Britannia became the land of the Angles or Ængla Land.

I tend to be a bit of a proselytiser for the importance of royal courts, but all politics - in fact every form of human organisation, and this is something that's so dreadful for all those brought up in the 60s - naturally reverts to monarchy. Newspapers have editors, companies have chief executives.

The mere mention of domestic service brings some people out in spots of outrage, but there is a crying need for relatively low-level employment. It's ridiculous that people at the top are killing themselves in demanding jobs and then coming home to mow their own lawns.

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