Quotes from David Starkey

I enjoy cooking, but stick to modern dishes.

I was born in a council house, my father left school at the age of 11, had his teeth out without anaesthetic at the age of 22.

Not to invent yourself is to be false. To follow preordained rules is a profound betrayal of what it means to be human.

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.

I went to a progressive primary school in Kendal, followed by a boys' grammar school and then Cambridge.

To footnote properly takes time.

The whites have become black. A particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic gangster culture has become the fashion. Black and white, boy and girl operate in this language together. This language, which is wholly false, which is this Jamaican patois that has intruded in England.

Academics aren't paid very much, but as a single gay man I was never badly off. You don't have kids. You don't have a non-working wife's insatiable demand for shoes or wallpaper.

The notion of public service has effectively been abandoned. Every political party now buys into business values, and into the notion that by definition business must run things more efficiently.

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.

Since I was a child, I've gone to bed when things get too much. As a result, I have more trouble winding up than winding down in the morning. I need a second cup of coffee and then I potter around in a disgusting white towelling dressing gown for as long as possible.

One of the reasons Britain escaped the poisonous nonsense of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia is the sheer, absolute, middle-of-the-road, tedious banality of the House of Windsor. I don't want my politics to be passionate.

The Windsor monarchy is held in just awe. The whole process of criticism of the personal behaviour of the monarch is put in absolute suspense until about 1977, when it begins again.

My parents were Quaker, and they were part of that old self-improving working class.

The wives of Henry VIII are too big to be left to chick lit. Their importance is the impact they have on the broad history of the period. On the lives of every man and every woman who lived in England then, and subsequently has lived in England.

If you look at comparative figures, the last two episodes of 'Six Wives of Henry VIII' were watched by 4m. Graham Norton, who is very funny, gets 3m. Johnny Vaughan's comedy, which I have never seen but people say isn't very good, got less than half the viewers of 'Six Wives.'

Writing is a real activity conducted in real time.

In the early 20th century the monarchy was held up as the archetypical virtuous British family. In the late 20th century it became the most wonderful symbol of the complete re-engineering of family structures.

I'm a kind of double-breasted rebel in that I've always believed the important thing is that generations react against one another. For instance, there was always something oddly creative about the fact that Hanoverian sons hated their fathers so much.

In the same way that I've no desire to live in earlier historical periods, I never touch historical recipes. Most historical cooking is detestable.

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

The reign of Henry VIII is the axis around which England turns.