When Historians Attack

This programme, while B grade in name, will probably not be hosted by Larry Emdur any time soon. However it is making the headlines of today's SMH. Self-appointed chronicler of the English Monarchy, David Starkey, has described the present Queen as 'a housewife' having a 'little bit of Goebells' in her dislike of culture. Suffice to say, Her Majesty's British press and public are not amused.

What does this highbrow Christmas pantomine mean? Starkey has a reputation as the rudest man in Britain, who in fact was considered so rude by the British public that they acquitted the much-maligned Richard III in a TV special based on Starkey's manner under cross-examination. Starkey specialises in the Tudor period (as did his mentor, Geoffery Elton). The Tudors essentially used the power of legal argument to imagine into being the Divine Right of Kings. The DRK is alien to an English legal system operating on the 'ancient common law' and supported by rights derived from Magna Carta.

He clearly appreciates power, education and force of personality. He clearly has at least two of these, and yearns for the third through his historical writings and television apprearances. He has the kind of attachment and admiration for Elizabeth I which makes him particularly vulnerable to unfavourable comparisons with Elizabeth II. As a Quaker Tory, he believes in the character of the individual as the predominant influence, and he no doubt had his nose put acutely out of joint when Elizabeth II showed acute boredom at his exhbition on Elizabeth I. When his great work made barely a dint on the attentions of his beloved monarchy, it is understandable that he would scorn the lack of education that Elizabeth II demonstrated.

Starkey must suffer acute frustration that his sovereign is mediocre compared with her historical forebears. However Elizabeth II is a product of her time. The monarchy has had no real power since the days of Victoria, and has been on the wane from the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when Parliament decided who should sit on the throne. Starkey's vision of Tudor power is a historical aberration. His criticism no doubt will generate further interest in his work and earn him a few more hundred thousand pounds a year, although one senses this is a secondary motivation. However, his true concern appears to be his relationship to power, as exercised through the royal line, rather than the short-term, populist and self-serving projects of the elected monarchy installed down the road in Westminister.