Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from My Heart Radio. My guest today is one
Speaker 1: of Britain's leading royal historians, Dr David Starkey. Starkey has
Speaker 1: lectured at the London School of Economics and authored numerous
Speaker 1: books and television series on the English monarchy. He's also
Speaker 1: known for his blazingly sharp commentary on BBC four's debate program,
Speaker 1: The Moral Maze, BBC one's Question Time, and most recently
Speaker 1: covering the Queen's Platinum Jubilee for gb News. Since David
Speaker 1: Starkey has written dozens of books and produced hours upon
Speaker 1: hours of documentary television. I was curious how he's able
Speaker 1: to produce such a large body of work. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: I am prolific, actually, Alec, and I'm not if you've noticed,
Speaker 1: as there are terrible high atosis. The books tend to
Speaker 1: cluster very closely together. There are moments when I churned
Speaker 1: stuff out almost unconsciously. I mean, let's deal with the
Speaker 1: two polls of how I write and what I've done,
Speaker 1: and let's take the one where my late partner James Brown,
Speaker 1: who plays a key role in so much of this,
Speaker 1: said I should never say, my Elizabeth book, which is
Speaker 1: on the life of the not the present Queen Elizabeth,
Speaker 1: of course, but the first Queen Elizabeth, who comes to
Speaker 1: the throne at the same sort of age, five centuries ago.
Speaker 1: In I wrote that book starting in the very end
Speaker 1: of August, and I had finished it by the end
Speaker 1: of January. And I wrote it and James said, I
Speaker 1: should never say this with a sense of dictation of
Speaker 1: somebody talking to me, a kind of inner process. And
Speaker 1: it's a book that I think is a good piece
Speaker 1: of history, but more important than els, it's a kind
Speaker 1: of it's it's an attempt at re envisaging historical biography
Speaker 1: through a medium of the novel, and through I mean
Speaker 1: in terms of style, and through a very very conscious
Speaker 1: exercise of how to write. And the chapters are very short.
Speaker 1: There are normally very short sentences. There's one chapter which
Speaker 1: many reviewers got terribly excited about, which is a page long.
Speaker 1: It deals with the death of Elizabeth's great rival and
Speaker 1: her cousin, her half sister Mary Tudor, and it says
Speaker 1: all that it needs to do, cleverly, succinctly, and above all, finally,
Speaker 1: it's about a death. I was writing it much more
Speaker 1: as you would have written fiction in terms of the
Speaker 1: flow of the sense of the language driving it. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, the other poll of my creativity or
Speaker 1: lack of it, or productivity or lack of it, is
Speaker 1: my biography of Henry the Eighth, which, one way or another,
Speaker 1: I suppose I started in seven and have not yet
Speaker 1: fully finished an unfinished book. I well, I published the
Speaker 1: first volume of the the biography, the the one again
Speaker 1: on Henry's youth. It's not it's it's a kind of
Speaker 1: deliberate fragment. And my great problem with that book has
Speaker 1: been I suppose I know too much. You can know
Speaker 1: too much, you can have too much detail. I've also,
Speaker 1: because again I know too much, I've been changing my mind.
Speaker 1: Give me an example of what you changed your mind about.
Speaker 1: I thought I understood the relationship between Henry the Eighth
Speaker 1: and his father, Hendry the seventh. I thought I understood
Speaker 1: the beginning of the reign, which, of course is is
Speaker 1: the moment which a monarch, like a president or a
Speaker 1: Napoleon in his first hundred days is when you really
Speaker 1: put your impress on things. And then I discovered I
Speaker 1: was wrong, And I think one of the most important
Speaker 1: things to be aware of is when you are wrong.
Speaker 1: So many people persist with an original idea and original
Speaker 1: insight even when the evidence tells them that it's wrong.
Speaker 1: And I can't do that, and I always right directly
Speaker 1: from the historical evidence. Again, one of the things that
Speaker 1: people when they're being kind, some people are being very
Speaker 1: unkind what people say about my books is this the
Speaker 1: sense of the history actually getting up and talking to you.
Speaker 1: And the reasons for that is I write directly from
Speaker 1: the sources. The basic way I proceed, you know, in
Speaker 1: Six Wives or Elizabeth or indeed Henry, I operate from
Speaker 1: a chronological in other words, in strict order of events
Speaker 1: and list of documents, dates, whatever that act as the
Speaker 1: spine of the narrative. I'm a passionate believer in narrative history,
Speaker 1: in telling the story. But the evidence is there, So
Speaker 1: when you're doing the research, is there a small grouping
Speaker 1: of sources for that which when you want to understand
Speaker 1: the truth and you want the facts as you recognize
Speaker 1: them about Henry the Eighth's childhood and all of the history,
Speaker 1: you've given us this thumbnail about us. Now, where do
Speaker 1: you typically go? Where does that exist in England? It
Speaker 1: exists in various forms, some of them very very well
Speaker 1: known annics, and some of them that we hardly know
Speaker 1: at all. I mean, the revelations that I came up
Speaker 1: with the issue of money is going through the records
Speaker 1: of Hender the sevens private finance is. And the reason I,
Speaker 1: as it were, rethought them was there was a remarkable project.
Speaker 1: The manuscripts exists. They're pretty continuous there, with some rather
Speaker 1: large gaps at awkward moments, but there was a project
Speaker 1: to transfer a very modern kind of project to edit
Speaker 1: the manuscripts and to put them online. And I was
Speaker 1: involved in that project as the kind of senior citizen,
Speaker 1: if you like, an earlier generation, a scholar and all
Speaker 1: the rest of it. So I suddenly started going through
Speaker 1: them with a degree of detail that I've never done before. Remember,
Speaker 1: you're looking at, effectively a daily record of royal expenditure
Speaker 1: on everything from and I have bought what might it be,
Speaker 1: a couple of bonnets for one of my pages too,
Speaker 1: I am going to send a hundred and thousands odd
Speaker 1: thousand pounds right so between everything from tops two hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of pounds, all of course expressed in Roman numbers,
Speaker 1: which doesn't do necessarily make life very easy. But I
Speaker 1: did two things with with this set of accounts. And
Speaker 1: I looked at them simply in terms of retotaling them
Speaker 1: and thinking about what the totals meant. And interestingly, a
Speaker 1: generation of earlier scholars came up with with these figures,
Speaker 1: but they were using eighteen century transcripts rather than the
Speaker 1: original manuscripts. And it was very great German scholar who
Speaker 1: did the basic work, and he looked at that figure
Speaker 1: of a hundred none thousand pounds and he said, simply,
Speaker 1: this is impossible. It must be a miss transcript. It
Speaker 1: can't have happened. And then of course I discovered it had.
Speaker 1: And his stories simply tend to repeat each other. They
Speaker 1: don't question. We take shortcuts because it's much easier. And
Speaker 1: also there's a peculiar thing the way modern scholarship works,
Speaker 1: which is this emphasis on citation. You cite a source,
Speaker 1: but I, of course, once a mistake has actually got
Speaker 1: into the process unless you go back right right to
Speaker 1: the beginning. And here again, like there's as it's strange
Speaker 1: in the sense that your own period can very much
Speaker 1: color your approach. And my attitude to scholarship was formed
Speaker 1: in two very different ways a very different periods of
Speaker 1: my life. The first was when I was a young
Speaker 1: man at Cambridge. I had a remarkable teacher, a man
Speaker 1: called His name is normally given as Jeffrey Elton. His
Speaker 1: real name is Gottfried Uolf Ehlenberg. He is one of
Speaker 1: those extraordinary Jewish refugees of the nineteen thirties, totally transformed
Speaker 1: intellectual life in Britain and America. And he represented the
Speaker 1: high German tradition of rigorous academic scholarship. And I studied
Speaker 1: with him in my final year as an undergraduate student,
Speaker 1: and then I did my research with him. And I
Speaker 1: suppose in retrospect the great moment of my emerging as
Speaker 1: an independent scholar was when I was still Diabean. I
Speaker 1: had been twenty two, I was in my final year
Speaker 1: as an undergraduate. I was doing my special subject with him.
Speaker 1: And the special subject was, again, it was on the
Speaker 1: fifteen thirties, and you didn't have original documents, but you
Speaker 1: had extracts from them. And Jeoffrey had done the work
Speaker 1: very carefully, and he transcribed them and he described them.
Speaker 1: And I can still remember the moment as a tentative
Speaker 1: hand went up and said Professor Elton, I think you've
Speaker 1: got this document wrong. As a twenty two year old
Speaker 1: to this great match and to know what I was right,
Speaker 1: I thought at that point, well, I can probably do
Speaker 1: this now you mentioned that Henry the seventh is the
Speaker 1: commencement of you will or I'll let you use your
Speaker 1: words of the House of Tutor explained to our listeners.
Speaker 1: Who are you know? Many Americans have zero knowledge of
Speaker 1: the history of the British family, and little to none
Speaker 1: of the current British family. They only know scandal and
Speaker 1: gossip and so forth. What is the birth of a house?
Speaker 1: What is a house? And how does one house take over?
Speaker 1: If you will? Or come to the four? Were now
Speaker 1: in the period of the House of Windsor, which I
Speaker 1: think that was formed in nineteen seventeen, correct, So what
Speaker 1: is a house and how does a house come to
Speaker 1: the four? If you will? Well, you have the Kennedys,
Speaker 1: you have a succession a father son, and then nephews,
Speaker 1: niece's grandchildren and whatever. And that's exactly the same. It's
Speaker 1: a dynasty again, you know. It was a famous film,
Speaker 1: is a famous TV series called Dynasty about the successive
Speaker 1: generations of the family. And that is what it is.
Speaker 1: The various dynasties that have ruled the English throne take
Speaker 1: these names. There are often names that we give them backwards. Now,
Speaker 1: how does one dynasty succeed another? Well, in the case
Speaker 1: of five, which is the succession between the House of
Speaker 1: York and the House of Tudor, you succeed by killing
Speaker 1: again very much, I suppose, you know, Like many modern
Speaker 1: TV series, one monarch kills another monarch, and aspirant monarch
Speaker 1: kills his rival and literally at the Battle of Bosworth
Speaker 1: in rich Of the third of the House of York
Speaker 1: and Hendra the seventh, he's not yet called hend of
Speaker 1: the seventh, he's called Henry, Earl of Richmond. They literally fight.
Speaker 1: They don't quite fight face to face, but you know,
Speaker 1: it's like something out of a fantastic myth. He charges
Speaker 1: down at the head of his knights, mounted on horseback,
Speaker 1: wearing full armor. He has got the crown, the actual
Speaker 1: gold element of the crown, the band of the crown
Speaker 1: put on over his helmet. They charged down with their
Speaker 1: great lances towards Hender seventh, Henry Earl of Richmond and
Speaker 1: his very small army at the bottom, and Richard is
Speaker 1: literally aiming to strike at Henry Earl of Richmond himself.
Speaker 1: He aims for his standard. He actually cuts down his
Speaker 1: standard bearer, and he's only brought down because again the paradox,
Speaker 1: hend of the seventh takes the throne of England. Henry
Speaker 1: heard of Richmond takes the throne of England with French help,
Speaker 1: and Henry Earl of Richmond emerges triumphant on the field
Speaker 1: of Bosworth and is literally crowned with the band of
Speaker 1: Richard's crown which had been torn off his helmet and
Speaker 1: has put on Henry's and it had been found in
Speaker 1: a hawthorn bush. Is quite clear this actually it's a legend,
Speaker 1: but it's true. It actually happens, and he's crowned on
Speaker 1: the battlefield. So it is the out of medieval fantasy, right,
Speaker 1: it's true. Now, how is the House of Winds are invented? Well,
Speaker 1: seventeen is quite a long way from and what happens
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventeen. It's a pr are exercise, pure pr exercise,
Speaker 1: and one of the most brilliant pieces of pr that
Speaker 1: ever men carried out. By the early twentieth century, as
Speaker 1: it had been since the beginning of the eighteenth century,
Speaker 1: as it was when America separates by an act of
Speaker 1: rebellion from Great Britain. Britain is ruled by a German
Speaker 1: royal house, by the House of Hanover, and it remains
Speaker 1: to an extraordinary extent German through the following two centuries,
Speaker 1: through the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century.
Speaker 1: Because of their marriage customs, they marry back into Germany. So,
Speaker 1: for example, Victoria marries her remote cousin called Albert of
Speaker 1: sax Calledbert Guta and Victorian Albert actually converse with each
Speaker 1: other in German. They write letters to each other in German.
Speaker 1: They discuss the fate of the British Empire in German.
Speaker 1: And this continues right through to the beginning of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century, when unfortunately, of course, in nineteen fourteen England
Speaker 1: and Germany go to war. But of course, if you're
Speaker 1: fighting a war in an age of nations and nationhood,
Speaker 1: how can you have your ruler being German when you're
Speaker 1: fighting the Germans in absolute war? The First World War,
Speaker 1: I mean even more than the American Civil War is
Speaker 1: the first total war. You can't do it. So what
Speaker 1: you do is you reinvent and so you completely reinvent
Speaker 1: the monarchy. You rename it. You give it a consciously
Speaker 1: English name. You give it this name Windsor Brilliant. You know,
Speaker 1: it's Shakespeare. It's the merry Wives of Windsor. It's a
Speaker 1: little touch of soft soap, you know, woods of winds
Speaker 1: of the kind of nice smell on your hands. It's
Speaker 1: the English countryside marketing, the great historic castle. It's musterly.
Speaker 1: So you reinvent the name. But you do much more
Speaker 1: than reinvent the name. You re invent everything. You reinvent
Speaker 1: the marriage custom. You were talking about the fact that
Speaker 1: we just know the opera soap opera, the modern soap opera.
Speaker 1: Monarchy also goes back to nineteen seventeen because for the
Speaker 1: first time they decide their children can marry english men
Speaker 1: and English women. So you can present this as romance,
Speaker 1: the sort of romance of the marriage of Charles and
Speaker 1: Diana that goes so catastrophically wrong. You reinvent royal ceremony.
Speaker 1: Before this point, most royal ceremony is private. Royal marriages
Speaker 1: take place in tiny little spaces like the Chapel Royal
Speaker 1: at St. James's. Now suddenly they go back to the abbey,
Speaker 1: or they go to Saint Paul's, they go into splendor.
Speaker 1: You do something even more remarkable. You reinvent you know,
Speaker 1: we have this funny business in Britain, the honor system,
Speaker 1: commanders of the British Empire like me and all this stuff.
Speaker 1: All this is invented in seventeen for the very first
Speaker 1: time that people who are not part of a narrow
Speaker 1: aristocratic circle can be given titles, honors, whatever. And I
Speaker 1: suppose what it really amounts to, alex is you consciously
Speaker 1: make the monarchy a paradox. You invent democratic royalty, monarchy democratic,
Speaker 1: and it's it's a profound paradox because again the English,
Speaker 1: because of parliament, because of our limit history of limited government,
Speaker 1: going right right back to Magna Carta. People think of
Speaker 1: England as having been sort of always democratic. It's not true.
Speaker 1: We only become full democracy after the First World War
Speaker 1: historian David Starkey. If you enjoy conversations about government and power,
Speaker 1: check out my interview with an expert on American history,
Speaker 1: Michael Wolfe, author of the book Fire and Fury, on
Speaker 1: the Donald Trump presidency. I think one I felt most
Speaker 1: of all is that everybody there was tainted by this
Speaker 1: and felt tainted by this, and believe that they would
Speaker 1: not come out ahead, that this was a net loss
Speaker 1: all of the people around Trump. That's what that's the
Speaker 1: conclusion that they came to, opposite of what you would
Speaker 1: expect people to feel. People come out of the White
Speaker 1: House and they make lots of money, and they're famous,
Speaker 1: and they have lots of influence and may be proud
Speaker 1: of their work. Exactly and literally all of these people
Speaker 1: who went in thinking this would happen to them and
Speaker 1: came out as the months rolled on, thinking this is
Speaker 1: all broke. This is not going to work. This is
Speaker 1: not going to end well for anybody. Here more of
Speaker 1: my conversation with Michael Wolfe in our archives at Here's
Speaker 1: the Thing dot org. After the Break, David Starkey shares
Speaker 1: his thoughts on Queen Elizabeth's controversial handling of the death
Speaker 1: of Princess Diana. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing. Since the Royal family has played such
Speaker 1: a large role in the life and work of Dr
Speaker 1: David Starkey, I wanted to know if the crown loomed
Speaker 1: large in his early life very much so, I mean
Speaker 1: let's be truthful, not in a particularly enthusiastic way. My
Speaker 1: family background was modest. My parents were very definitely working class.
Speaker 1: My father had left school at eleven, my mother at thirteen.
Speaker 1: He was a manual worker. My father's politics were very radical.
Speaker 1: My father wanted to be a pacifist. He finally decided
Speaker 1: he couldn't declare his pacifism in the Second World War
Speaker 1: because he'd been unemployed for four terrible years in the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties and undergoing terrible poverty. He was a radical
Speaker 1: member of the Labor Party. He was a leading local
Speaker 1: trade unionist and all that. I first became absolutely aware
Speaker 1: of the monarchy at a key moment of my life
Speaker 1: and that of many people of my generation, which was
Speaker 1: the coronation of Elizabeth the Second in nineteen fifty three.
Speaker 1: I'd remember the day in absolute detail. It was the
Speaker 1: first time i'd seen television. And then you watched the ceremony,
Speaker 1: which is extraordinary. It's magical. This woman, who was then
Speaker 1: radiantly beautiful, clad in white, as the center of this
Speaker 1: vast ceremony. It's like it's like a Japanese imperial coronation.
Speaker 1: It goes on for about six hours, in this huge
Speaker 1: space of the abbey, with all these old distinguished gentlemen
Speaker 1: wearing scarlet and fur if they're members of the nobility
Speaker 1: or in elaborate copes and miters of their clergy, and
Speaker 1: this woman at the center of it magically. So that's
Speaker 1: a moment I think which I first and as I said,
Speaker 1: I engage in a way which which resonates in my
Speaker 1: memory to the moment was speaking. What would you say
Speaker 1: in her reign? Most people in the States, the scandal
Speaker 1: obsessed United States, But in this jubilee now seventy years
Speaker 1: of this woman serving as Queen. I listened some of
Speaker 1: the retrospectives and commentary of people, and they would all
Speaker 1: acknowledge it pretty much the only real meaningful setback for
Speaker 1: her was the handling of the death of Lady Diana.
Speaker 1: That was the only really raging criticisms she faced in
Speaker 1: her reign of so many years. Would you agree that
Speaker 1: that was really the only real major setback for her? Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean equally, I think that the British public at
Speaker 1: the time of Diana, in the same that we did
Speaker 1: at the time of the George Floyd incident in with COVID,
Speaker 1: we went through one of those things which the great
Speaker 1: British historian Lord Macauley said, there is nothing as ridiculous
Speaker 1: as the British public in one of its periodical fits
Speaker 1: of morality. And what you've got with Diana was a
Speaker 1: clash between two completely different views of what monarchy is about.
Speaker 1: For the Queen, monarchy is about service, it's about duty.
Speaker 1: It's about getting on with things, getting up in the morning,
Speaker 1: doing it even if you don't feel very good, never
Speaker 1: telling anybody if your feet are hurting or you feel miserable.
Speaker 1: For Diana, although Diana, you know, she's the daughter of
Speaker 1: a great English family, our English aristocratic family. The Spencer
Speaker 1: Churchill's Diana always behaved as though she'd been born in
Speaker 1: Orange County, and she was profoundly American in her attitudes
Speaker 1: to celebrity. She saw monarchy selebrity. She saw her role
Speaker 1: as to be emotionally honest at a time of course,
Speaker 1: when the great problem with with monarchy is that it's
Speaker 1: an individual and the family that is required to have
Speaker 1: its personal life and its family life turned into some
Speaker 1: sort of symbol. Now, there's always going to be the
Speaker 1: risk of a violent clash between the reality of the
Speaker 1: humanity and the enormous hopes which are vested in it.
Speaker 1: And one of the ways that the Queen has always
Speaker 1: dealt with that is by simply silence. No one really
Speaker 1: knows what she thinks about anything, whether with Diana. Diana
Speaker 1: decided that the only way and quite understandably, that she
Speaker 1: could protect herself in the horrors that it turned out
Speaker 1: of her marriage with Charles was by talking about it.
Speaker 1: Was by being open about it, by using the media,
Speaker 1: as she saw it, to redress the valance of power
Speaker 1: against her husband's family and what she saw as the
Speaker 1: conspiracy of the media against her. And so you have,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, somebody who believes in shutting everything up,
Speaker 1: the Queen, and you've got somebody else called Diana, who
Speaker 1: believes in letting it all hang out. That the famous
Speaker 1: interview with Martin Bashir, which we now know is a
Speaker 1: product of the most shady behavior by the BBC, but
Speaker 1: that equally the Princess went along with it because she
Speaker 1: recognized she was, in fact a most brilliant media operator.
Speaker 1: Diana made monarchy and made royalty about celebrity. The Queen
Speaker 1: has always she's taken the totally opposite view that monarchy
Speaker 1: and celebrity are enemies. They may look the same, they're different.
Speaker 1: So it was really it was what happened between the
Speaker 1: Queen and Diana was I think a genuine tragedy. It
Speaker 1: was a clash of two different views of right and
Speaker 1: wrong and it was utterly a reckons sign of And
Speaker 1: although that what you're saying, I completely understand, some people
Speaker 1: on this side of the pond, if you will, were
Speaker 1: also speculating that that family wasn't happy about the fact that.
Speaker 1: And you can explain to me the schematics of this,
Speaker 1: which is that if she divorces Charles, she's still entitled
Speaker 1: to a title herself because she has children with him,
Speaker 1: she's the mother of royal blood. And if she had
Speaker 1: married Fired, he would be entitled to a title as well.
Speaker 1: Having married her, he would not all of all of
Speaker 1: that is total fiction. These you are you're quite right
Speaker 1: to put your finger on the issue of divorce. There
Speaker 1: is a profound struggle as to whether or not divorce
Speaker 1: is acceptable. Remember, virtually nobody gets divorced before the nineties.
Speaker 1: It's very difficult to get in Britain, it's virtually impossible.
Speaker 1: And what happens is the monarchy in Britain is used
Speaker 1: as a kind of front in that struggle by the
Speaker 1: Church of England. By it's it's astonishingly talented that I
Speaker 1: think rather malign Archbishop Archbishop Cosmo Gordon Lang. It's used
Speaker 1: as a kind of battering ram to wait to keep
Speaker 1: the lid on divorce. And again, of course there is
Speaker 1: the whole trauma in the mind of everybody who is royal,
Speaker 1: which is the marriage and the catastrophic marriage which forces
Speaker 1: his abdication of the Queen's uncle of Edward the Eighth
Speaker 1: to the American Mrs Simpson. And it's this idea of
Speaker 1: the monarchy and divorce being fundamentally opposed to each other.
Speaker 1: In fact, there was an absolutely no rule against there's
Speaker 1: no definite rule against it. It was simply that it
Speaker 1: had become a method of symbolizing the monarchy as the
Speaker 1: great virtuous British family. And this is why the Queen
Speaker 1: has experienced so much trauma she with her marriage with
Speaker 1: the Duke of Edam. Whatever really happened, we will not
Speaker 1: know for generations, I imagine, because of the close of manuscripts,
Speaker 1: But they were always able to present the appearance and
Speaker 1: I think the reality of genuinely happy, creative marriage. Unfortunately
Speaker 1: her children couldn't. It. Therefore, very quickly becomes at tension
Speaker 1: between a myth of the monarchy as a happy royal
Speaker 1: family and the reality of them as an unhappy family
Speaker 1: characterized by a divorce, and of course the marriage and
Speaker 1: of Charles and Diana, and it's hideous dissolution becomes, as
Speaker 1: it were, the test case. It becomes the moment at
Speaker 1: which that image is finally blown up author and historian
Speaker 1: David Starkey. If you're enjoying this conversation, be sure to
Speaker 1: subscribe to Here's the Thing on the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. When we
Speaker 1: come back, David Starkey shares his thoughts on where things
Speaker 1: went wrong with Prince Harry and Megan Markle. I'm Alec
Speaker 1: Baldwin and this is Here's the Thing from my Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Since royal historian David Starkey has had such a long
Speaker 1: trained I on the monarchy, I was curious if he
Speaker 1: foresaw meg'sit, Prince Harry and Megan Markle's exit from the
Speaker 1: royal family. No, not at all. I took exactly. I
Speaker 1: mean the shows who know that that evidence is everything.
Speaker 1: The notion of the historian of profit is dangerously wrong.
Speaker 1: I made exactly the wrong guess. I thought that the
Speaker 1: marriage to Megan was remarkable. She you know, she's beautiful,
Speaker 1: she's intelligent, she's highly disciplined. I mean, he was a
Speaker 1: hair and scare and lad. It looked exactly the right thing.
Speaker 1: And the fact of course that she she has mixed
Speaker 1: race in one it's silly to say even better, but
Speaker 1: it expressed a reality of our modern I hate the
Speaker 1: word multicultural, but which is which is the wrong word.
Speaker 1: But but but our doubt the intense diversity of our societies.
Speaker 1: It expressed it beautifully. I in fact, I put the
Speaker 1: phrase about that the marriage of the two of them
Speaker 1: was in itself a kind of direct modernization of the monarchy.
Speaker 1: But then, of course it turned out that Megan and
Speaker 1: later on Harry decided they wanted to do it, in
Speaker 1: the words of Frank Sinatra, their way. Now. Unfortunately, monarchy
Speaker 1: doesn't work like that, and they found themselves in exactly
Speaker 1: the same trap as Diana, exactly the same trap as
Speaker 1: Edward the eighth, exactly the same trap that Henry the
Speaker 1: Eighth was in. And remember Henry the Eighth to escape
Speaker 1: from that trap and to do things that were unthinkable.
Speaker 1: He had to break with the Roman Church. He'd to
Speaker 1: tear his family apart, he to tear the country apart.
Speaker 1: It is not even then an easy thing to do.
Speaker 1: But of course, because of the power of his personality,
Speaker 1: that then power of the monarchy, the inheritance from his
Speaker 1: father and so on, he was able to do it.
Speaker 1: But of course Megan and Harry found themselves up against
Speaker 1: this machinery, and they took the decision, Okay, it won't
Speaker 1: change to accommodate us, We'll get out. And I think
Speaker 1: it's a profound sadness. But I would also put it
Speaker 1: in a more simple way. I think Gallex, I think
Speaker 1: Harry married his mother and told lots of men marry
Speaker 1: their mothers. And Meg Megan is a kind of version
Speaker 1: of Diana. She embodies many of the same instincts, many
Speaker 1: of the same disaurs, and it's very easy to see.
Speaker 1: I think Harry will eventually find his position a very
Speaker 1: lonely one. I mean, he's bought into this boy who
Speaker 1: was in the army at this boy who loved Soldiering,
Speaker 1: who established a very serious reputation as working for injured
Speaker 1: servicemen and injured veterans and whatever he now finds himself
Speaker 1: in that I think rather empty world of Californian celebrity,
Speaker 1: rootless world, the world of the artificiality of Netflix, steels
Speaker 1: and so on. I wonder how long he will last.
Speaker 1: I I feel the same exact way. I watched the
Speaker 1: whole thing play out, and I thought, my god, I mean,
Speaker 1: my glib joke was you gave up all of that
Speaker 1: to live in Santa Barbara. I mean, you know, I
Speaker 1: mean all your family and history and duty, and you
Speaker 1: were in the military. You understood that kind of service
Speaker 1: and duty, and you gave all that to go live
Speaker 1: over there where. I mean, unlike any other ice I've
Speaker 1: ever visited, someone sticking your thermometer in your mouth to
Speaker 1: tell you how hot you are every five minutes or
Speaker 1: how hot you're not. And if you're at the top
Speaker 1: of that game, if you're a winner, if all of
Speaker 1: that business is rolling in your direction, what's what's better
Speaker 1: than that? But once that cools off, boy, it's lonely.
Speaker 1: It's it's the loneliest place in the world. Now, my
Speaker 1: last question for you, one would assume that as the
Speaker 1: public relations fortunes of the royal family ebb and flow
Speaker 1: and go up and down related to scandal and so forth,
Speaker 1: or perceived scandal. I should say, I think that they've
Speaker 1: been treated very unfairly in some circumstances. So the jubilee comes,
Speaker 1: would you say that their stock is up? Would you
Speaker 1: say that the stock is up compared to the Because
Speaker 1: when when the megan here in the States, the Megan
Speaker 1: Markel thing played out like if not a thick stripe
Speaker 1: of racism exists among some denizens of Bucking Impalace, there's
Speaker 1: at least a tinge of that there. And now with
Speaker 1: the jubilee and the focus going back onto the Queen
Speaker 1: herself are things would you say that they're more popular
Speaker 1: again in the UK? I think, again, we've got to
Speaker 1: be really blunt about this. I think that that statement,
Speaker 1: which was deliberately vague about your somebody said something about
Speaker 1: what the color of the child might have been. I
Speaker 1: think that was an indecent thing to do. I think
Speaker 1: it was a shocking and disgraceful thing to say because
Speaker 1: it was entirely unspecific and untestable, and it was attributed.
Speaker 1: It was the merest slur. It was the dirtiest thing
Speaker 1: you could do, and frankly I have the lowest opinion
Speaker 1: of the woman who did it. I think it's and
Speaker 1: indeed the man. So let's say that one of the
Speaker 1: things that is most striking about the Royal family is
Speaker 1: how absolutely uncontaminated by racism they are. If you go
Speaker 1: back and you look at the history of the monarchy.
Speaker 1: Really from Victoria, everybody I think is heard of her extraordinary.
Speaker 1: It may even have been a marriage, though it's not
Speaker 1: quite likely, an extraordinary close relationship with with her Scottish
Speaker 1: gamekeeper with John Brown. The man who succeeds John Brown
Speaker 1: in Victorious Affections is an Indian servant, the Mucchi. And
Speaker 1: the relationship of the Royal family with, of course and
Speaker 1: deeply multi ethnic British Empire is one in which there
Speaker 1: has been a kind of rejoicing in the diversity. And
Speaker 1: the Queen of Doors Africa spent enormous amounts of time there.
Speaker 1: No she actually learns that she's queen in Kenya and
Speaker 1: so on. So I think that that this charge of
Speaker 1: racism is simply a disgraceful slur. I think it also
Speaker 1: again it's very important things play out differently on either
Speaker 1: side of the Atlantic, Megan and Harry were playing the
Speaker 1: American card. They were playing the celebrity, let it all
Speaker 1: hang out, victim, hood, Carl and afraid. In Britain, those
Speaker 1: cards don't play quite so well. The general sense in Britain,
Speaker 1: as Harry and Megan turned up very briefly for the
Speaker 1: Jubilee and then disappeared very quickly, was well, they're now
Speaker 1: second division. They were first division. They willfully pulled themselves out.
Speaker 1: And you know what, they don't much matter because what
Speaker 1: you saw on the balcony of Buckingham Palace was the Queen,
Speaker 1: the Queen's son, the Prince of Wales, his son, Prince William,
Speaker 1: and then Prince William's three children, including two boys. So
Speaker 1: you have literally a kind of the famous moment in
Speaker 1: Macbeth where Macbeth sees a line of kings stretching out
Speaker 1: at the end. Well, there was the line of monarchs
Speaker 1: on Buckingham Palace, and there was no Harry and there
Speaker 1: was no Megan. And they don't matter except in Hollywood,
Speaker 1: So you don't despair about the future of the monarchy.
Speaker 1: Will Charles be a good king? I think he probably
Speaker 1: will be. I think he's a very serious man, arguably
Speaker 1: is a little bit too serious. And again all so
Speaker 1: he's espoused what we always used to regard us through
Speaker 1: other silly things like ecology. They're now absolutely central. And
Speaker 1: my great fear is the opposite that Bibe and Prince
Speaker 1: William is even more vocal on these kinds of questions. Suddenly,
Speaker 1: of course, the whole question of environmentalism is going to be,
Speaker 1: because it's now the forefront of politics, is going to
Speaker 1: be a matter of major political dispute, especially now that
Speaker 1: net zero visibly carries very much non net cost in
Speaker 1: the words, it carries huge costs following the the the
Speaker 1: Ukraine War, the rocketing of fuel costs, which is much
Speaker 1: greater in Europe than it is in America. So there
Speaker 1: is a risk that by espousing what is now a
Speaker 1: very popular doctrine of ecology, you do store up the
Speaker 1: risk of taking two overt a stance on what is
Speaker 1: actually a very very definite issue of current politics. But
Speaker 1: I know that's too much to worry about. And you
Speaker 1: can see with William and Kate they're like a postcard
Speaker 1: for you almost look at William and Kate and it
Speaker 1: looks like pictures of Elizabeth and Philip traveling the country.
Speaker 1: They seem like they're born to the role and they
Speaker 1: completely understand what's expected of them. And I think that's right.
Speaker 1: I mean, again, to put it in you know, more
Speaker 1: pr sort of terms. I think the point is that
Speaker 1: both William and especially Kate, they are agree good looking
Speaker 1: young people, but they're profoundly conventional. They're happy in their
Speaker 1: skins doing what they're doing. Was of course, poor Harry
Speaker 1: was a lost soul. Diana was a lost soul, and
Speaker 1: these two are not. They they are comfortable in enacting
Speaker 1: the role, which is in a sense, you know, it's
Speaker 1: a kind of what I mean. You know, you talk
Speaker 1: about what we talk about Middle America, don't we. I
Speaker 1: mean their role is to kind of is to enact
Speaker 1: a kind of Middle British position. It seems to come
Speaker 1: to them naturally comfortably, and they perform it beautifully. My
Speaker 1: thanks to you. My my new dream is to come
Speaker 1: over there and interview you live in some theater over there.
Speaker 1: I could listen to you talk for quite a while.
Speaker 1: You are a fascinating man, and you're an incredibly scholarly man,
Speaker 1: which I admire. And you've helped me too, because I've
Speaker 1: always had this fascination with this history. So thank you
Speaker 1: so much, sir for your time, and thanks for coming
Speaker 1: on the show, and thank you historian Dr David Starkey.
Speaker 1: This episode was recorded at c DM Studios and produced
Speaker 1: by Kathleen Russo, Zach McNeice, and Maureen Hoban. Our engineer
Speaker 1: is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is Danielle Gingrich.
Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the Thing is brought to you
Speaker 1: by iHeart Radio four four