What is Britain's National Story? 

Please join the David Starkey Members' Club via Patreon www.patreon.com/davidstarkeytalks or Subscribestar www.subscribestar.com/david-starkey-talks and submit questions for members Q & A videos. Also visit www.davidstarkey.com to make a donation and visit the channel store shop.davidstarkey.com. Thank you for watching.

Starkey is a legend. Well done GBNews for getting this man back on our TV.

I left school at 16 to start an apprenticeship in a diesel engine factory. Never in my life did I imagine that I would find myself binge-watching a History Teacher.

you've been great on GB News. they should give you your own weekly show

Dr Starkey is brilliant, concise, eloquent.

The depth of knowledge David has to pull upon is really fascinating to listen to and experience. National treasure anyone?

NOBODY does it like Starkey. Pure gold.

This is what is needed in schools, not Black History Month !

Does Britain have One National Story. For its Historical 1000 years of Civil Government it has many. Being Australian I’m grateful how Britain Colonialism treated the New World with relative respect, even Americans agree most British Colonialism survives today in tact as Democratic Countries unlike The failures of Papacy dominated Spanish and Portuguese endeavours. Anglican England and Queen Elizabeth1,and the forgotten Genisus of Dr.John Dee., needs to be given a lot of credit. Sir Francis Drake and Captain Cook were extremely significant as well.

I cant wait to hear from Dr Starkey about the possibilities of the monarchy

Up to a point Dr Starkey. Geoffrey of Monmouth did not invent Arthur. You can find a short and crude account of Arthur in the work of Nennius, a monk writing in the ninth century. It is simply a list of battles which Arthur is supposed to have fought against the Saxons. It does not have a "legendary" character or quality and I have no idea if there is any truth in it.

I recall around a decade ago, I was travelling home from London St Pancras station. It was early evening yet dark because of the season. I say diagonally opposite from a neatly dressed man of mature years, who seemed faintly familiar. It was only after I’d got off at Canterbury that it came to me that this was Professor David Starkey. I like his tremendous enthusiasm for his subject, any subject he’s been invited to speak about.

I have often wondered why Beowulf is not the root of our national story. Thank you for your thoughts.

Not sure what is meant by the term a "National Story" exactly. If reference is being made to the 'Iliad' for the Greeks, then it would probably be the 'Aeneid' for Rome rather than the death of Julius Caesar, but that would be a national founding story, rather than the vaguer "national story". The English equivalent of these works is the 'Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum' by Bede, detailing the arrival on the British Isles' Eastern shores of a number of Teutonic peoples who crossed the North Sea from Germania in 'The Migration Period'. The proto-story of England's creation would be Tacitus's master-work: 'De origine et situ Germanorum'. The founding national story of the British Kingdom would lie somewhere in its defeat of Bonaparte on sea at the Nile & Trafalger & at Waterloo, the creation of the Industrial Revolution & the blaze of civilizational power displayed in the 18th-19th Centuries in the Sciences & Arts. That's where that unity of all the peoples of the British Isles first found expression.

I think that the King has done marvelous through this transition of Royal power. God bless the Queen. God Save the King.

Fantastic talk by David Starkey

I loved the description of sophisticated chroniclers versus gullible nobles in Italy. Plus ça change...

Can I just say David, that what you said about Harry marrying his mother but not the good parts of her is bang on, and thank you for saying what we all already knew.

GB News commentary on The Queen is brilliant. I'm addicted to every word.

The power (allegedly) of the "ARTHURIAN LEGEND" is still evident; at least in the current Royal Family. King George VI, King Charles III and William Prince of Wales all have ARTHUR as one of their names.

I would have loved to have had Mr. starky as my history teacher back in the 60s, instead of what i would now describe as the wokish teachers we actually had.

You're feeding my bad habits again! Precisely that dilemma was very familiar to such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Klaus von Stauffenberg, caught between loyalty to nation and loyalty to principle.

I’ll stick with Tolkien’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’.

Lady of Shalott: Poem - Tennyson. Painting - Waterhouse.

spectacular

I asked this question to David Starkey:)

Dr. Starkey, can you tell me how Camilla, KC’s current wife qualified to become a Knight of the Garter?

In Welsh history, there were 2 Arthurs... It is a name made up of 2 languages; Latin and Celtic - Arth and Ur, both meaning "Bear"...

Have I missed it? Why haven’t the BBC and other news media had one of the greatest authorities on the monarchy on air?

This was brilliant

Could you get a podcast set up to listen to these videos on the go?

Part 3: At 35:00mins in David Starkey tells us that the round table, the inner circle of the court, could not survive, the realisation of a new form of war fare for them total war. That the players at the table recognised that with the advent of total war, that was instrumentally effective, but unlimited, the vocabulary of the round table of virtue duty etc, had lost its normative force. That is the pure vocabulary of force and hypothetical imperatives, means ends rationality, was antithetical to agent centred, subject and responsibility centred ethical vocabulary. That is when ends justify the means absolutely, ethical vocabulary is eliminated. We might say though, the old vices of excess are now the new virtues. That pride as selfishness, is now the new ethical norm and reason and explanation and justification internally for the agent and externally for the historical observer. The old multitude of virtue of chiviraly, are replaced by an abstracted single vice of self and tactics. We then already see the transformation of the normative human being from aesthetic wisdom of synthetic unity of the virtues, to singular vice of self-interest at this point. it is this then that Hobbes will make his model of man, an animal with strategic intelligence for higher level self-interest. At the same time as Hobbes there are radical changes in the notions of just war from the virtue agent approach of Aquinas to the legalistic approach of Grotius. but now notice that whereas the old virtues sat at a mean between two extreme vices of excess and deficiency of the body, now in 17th century man is wholly and bodily essentially of the extreme of abstracted pride as selfishness. Now the old left-over virtues of the abstraction are taken out of the body of the subject and seen as legal rules and definitions of what "not to do" that are applied to the subject's body by force. The old Virtue and Vice imminent and continuous relations in the body, are seen as abstracted separable singular non-relational names, that can be separated placing the vice in the subject and the virtue in institutions of law wherein increasingly the agents of those institutions have no need for virtue since they too are self-interested to be limited in use of the law by rights of the subject in self-interest of that law. now there is no need for virtue or vice only law and an ontology of man as by nature self-interested and by legal norm a right holder. We finally get Richard Posner's economic theory of law, that of course was already chiselled into the semantics centuries ago waiting to be revealed. Whereas virtue referred to people in the law at first, we then had them split into law users and laws of the practice of using laws law as right laws. there is no meta virtue no duty in fact, only adherence to various levels of law so really subject and sovereign have disappeared into complex legal codes. But there is a revival of virtue in politics and ethics, but that might be even worse, since the use of virtue into this system of laws will means negative laws forbidding vice and obligating virtue but all done from a n abstract separation of law appliers and those its applied to, but now a demand for virtuous agents and subjects within this legal structure of negative and positive obligations backed up by force. The return of the old legal order that reaches right down into our bodies and seeks by legal machine right and good our bodily reorganisation. nothing is private here. it will happen though institutions of positive capability arguing for equality of opportunity for both the individual and the community both left and right. It will use combinations of legal risk probability, with institutions of employment and institutions of social justice, and i think both will draw deeply on modern medical science particularly psychology wherein modern CBT mindfulness is similar to old Roman Stoicism. this will know no end or limit on interventions in the person the family and the community. and all players left right religious etc will argue only over different content and aims and objectives. the basic logical institutional structure over the body, they will all share and agree on. Will men mostly of the lower social order still be expected to fight the wars, wars that have seen Cheverly, transformed but a constant, though all these semantics rearrangements. White Feathers for the un-Mindfull?

15:30 me anytime I try to speak in public

Does this 200’ diameter (?) round table still exist ? Is it still at Winchester?

Is there a film or documentary on Brutus of Troy, the first Briton? I'm aware that he is considered to be a mythological character but his tale rivals that of Odysseus and Aeneas. Seems that many countries of West trace their lineage back to Troy. Any recommendations on this subject would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Edward Hine's book Lost Israel Found outlines the case for why the British Anglo Saxon peoples are the lost tribes of Israel which becomes British Israelism. May the people of Great Britain, America and the Commonwealth come to know their true identity in the restoration and to God Almighty be the glory.

Tolkien tried to make the Lord of the Rings a British mythology in a way

The mythical founders of the English were the brothers Hengist and Horsa, maybe that would still be the case if there hadn't been the Norman conquest.

In the African Great Lakes region, it's the Bachwezi.

The Chilvalric Myth of King Arthur was merely a Norman romance to give themselves a British Isles pseudo-identity, I don't think it was the start of the British national concept, if it was it took an awful long time to come to legal fruition.

If you generously ignore his "Boris Johnson is the second comming of Disraeli" stance, Starkey is quite a useful historian.

King Arthur and Robin Hood

Who headlined Glastonbury in 1278?

Well he doesn’t use Botox based on how his eyebrows pop up, which I quite like well done David

1066 had a devastating impact on the Anglo Saxons in England. Their civilisation barely survived the severing of the elitist head from the largely peasant body.

He talking about an ancient brexit from Europe.

Whatever it is its certainly one where "immigrants" as current society understands the term has had little bearing until 1947 where it has had a massively negative impact.

John William Waterhouse painted The Lady of Shallot - several versions.

Part 1 Maney thanks for the talk, I’m inspired even though I’m only part way through. I have to write now, but I'm too tired to exercise virtue here and try and do justice to this discussion, not least because I am a layperson on Ancient and Medieval history. But i want, if I may, to just say a few things. Firstly, there is a strange irony here, in that you seem to be engaged in a practice of deconstruction of mythology, by placing myths as contextual historical constructions, which quickly collapse in any genral or universal normative force when we see them as not just depicting in narrative synthesis of internal and external, foreign and domestic, personal and political conflict, but as themselves just various pragmatic moves that are imminent and particular to the eternal game of conflict. That is the myths are viewed as having no transcendent aesthetic truth, but only as a kind of propaganda function at the time that has the effect of leaving a trace of itself in shaping the future. We might say we moderns study the structural differences and conditions emergence of these myths, the narrative and metaphorical mechanisms tropes etc they draw on and reconfigure. They may not claim to truth but just as a person's false belief can explain a person action particularly in historical understanding that has to consider real agents making (by synthesis and judgement in a situation) events in action that appear as supernatural to the law like course of nature. Myths become, like anything else pragmatic, revealing a privilege narrative by the winners of a political contest and now as advent is still political contested for pragmatic purposes. The contemporys just ask will this story work for me, for us. Will it help to keep the bodies buried. everyone knows they have effect in shaping our actions and interpretations, but no one thinks are they true: it just isn't a question we moderns think is worth asking. Think of Kierkegaard's view of Lessing's natural theological attempts to find scientific proof for the real historical Jesus. So there is a strange historicism here of depicting myths as, out of water, already from a privileging of modern views of it as say function pragmatic utility. but we moderns are correct to be sceptical of manufactures rhetorical devices and aesthetic images. but the irony here also is that the views of modern science are taken as realist: as about "things in themselves" in the past or the present or even the future, events and events of man himself and even, with say Foucault: the invention of man himself, wea re not a thing in itself but once a mere accidental branch of homo to homo Sapien and now a constructed concept: itself the creation and origin of the myth of man as a creative construction for power. We moderns as embarking on projects in the scientific image of man have sought to tear down all mythologies of the premodern pre-enlightenment, and as claimed by Nietzsche and Anscombe the death of God, the death of myth, has grown up to include the death of the human agent, the author, no one knew (perhaps Henry of Ghent) that the advent of Galilean science would eventually turn on its creator and annihilate him. Science had a hidden clause, a double effect, a freedom from agent liability, that was to draw on a prescientific language a destiny to transubstantiate man into its own image of being a part of a mechanism, of rights and utilities transcendent ends. So purpose and action are still alive in the modern legal mechanical machine of politics, it's just a purpose that exceeds and diminishes the human purposes. A strange dynamic hyperstatic groups of contested purposes in which man is a tool for the purposes and is measured by them. Aristotle's root model of agency and virtue from the ancient and medieval world is not just eliminated but transformed into alienating institutional functions. The contested battle of myths and narratives continues in seeking utility right now. When man is gone, we will have no recognisable notions of consent only people under networks of forces, myth being just one in the toolbox of political science and the new numbers rhetoric and graphs aesthetic. but we don't need some Arthur myth from who knows when, for who knows what, to return for our silent awe.

Nice

"The British, or the English myth", displays your real misunderstanding of the history of our people.

The national myth has evolved. It will again. Right now the courage of the Britain and her colonies standing against Hitler (alone from May 1940 to June 1941) is the unifying "myth" of the land. The myths in the past were rooted in Hastings, the reign of Henry VIII, the final triumph of Parliament in 1688, the Industrial Revolution, and the foundation of the British Century after the Napoleonic Wars. Arthur is a good story but is not and never has been the tie that binds.

Aphex Twin Tamphex?

If you haven’t got time for the whole talk then 15.20 is about as English as you can get

Peasant grunts! Dr Starkey knows a huge amount and I have great respect, but he KNOWS NOTHING about the huge amount of complex post-Conquedt English and the scholarship thst has been done on it.

Vinnie Sulivan dump him Thomas he drain you Thomas.

7:05 "If Nennius established Arthur as a British hero, Geoffrey of Monmouth brought him to life. Born around 1090, possibly in Wales, and educated in Paris and Oxford, Geoffrey was ensconced as a bishop in Britain in the mid-1100s when he wrote, in Latin, perhaps the book about Arthur. Also in the 12th century, the monk Nennius, in his Historia Brittonum (The History of the Britons) listed Arthur's battles against Germanic invaders - the Saxons and the Angles(Anglo Saxons) - during the late 5th and early 6th centuries. Tacitus, in full Publius Cornelius Tacitus, or Gaius Cornelius Tacitus, (born ad 56-died c. 120), Roman orator and public official, probably the greatest historian and one of the greatest prose stylists who wrote in the Latin language and identified the people he(Arthur) came from, there is also testimony from " by Julius Caesar and Cornelius Tacitus" as to this. 7:41 British world? this is Briton, Britain/British doesn,t exist yet 8:28 the term Anglo Saxon wasn,t in existence till late 17/18th century so the invaders were simply Germanic peoples! Frankly you are babbling state education with a few modifications to account for revelations which boots your English and British identity out the window, hence such a reputed person has to try to tackle the issue but your stammering exposes your inept attempt to mask reality , save your reputation or i will simple pull it apart on this subject !!

….fucks sake….

The British were from Troy? That's why the Welch speakers can understand Etruscan? Fact not myth?!

Arran is imaginary?

the the the give it up

you don't understand Scotland. Wales was conquered, Ireland was largely conquered, Scotland never was. Even though we were subsumed into the english parliament we always kept our own nationality. We had our own law, our own education system, our own religion. To ignore Scotland is to ignore Britain. And you just ignored Scotland in this whole thing.

Starkey is a charlatan who appeals to the simple minded

To service Africans, Arabs, Indians and Pakistanis?

So glad he's back he's our best Historian by far! Because he explains in great detail and has the voice of course to keep me captivated.

How I would have loved to have seen your historical knowledge and superb oratory prowess on television this weekend David. I hope to catch you on tour maybe kind regards Kerry.

Thank you for these fantastic lectures Dr Starkey . They are like having a one to one with a tutor at Oxbridge or something! ps I got to know the late Dr Phil Stone and thus was well versed in a view of Richard 3rd that was contrary to the Shakespearean one .

Hello David I'm a new subscriber I've been watching your programmes since I was little your my favourite historian. Thank god we have you 😚💕🕊

The woke progressives loss is our gain

I worry about who will replace David when he goes, sadly. I’m sure there are a lot of revisionists who would love history to be forgotten and new stories to be told.

Are you really saying Arthur was made up by Geoffrey of Monmouth? What about the Historia Brittonum, written in the 9th Century, which tells us of Arthur and the battles he supposedly fought? Or the Welsh Y Gododdin from the 6th Century? Whether or not he was based in history, Arthur is a figure who goes back well before the time you refer to

Encore une fois: un chef-d'œuvre !!!

Geoffrey of Monmouth did not ''invent'' Arthur, but he certainly added to the story. The Arthurian myths, like most myths, were not invented by any one individual; they evolved.

The arthurian stories were likely conflated mixing the deeds of several people. But the latter Arthur was a King of Glamorgan and served as Uther Pen Dragon (the terrible head general) when the various kings would ally and select one to act as the leader or duke of battle.

You have been wonderful on GB news in the last few days. Credit to your sensitivity wrt current events. You have previously made comments, which I found were quite astute but would not be considered appropriate right now. You hint at those positions in some of your GB news commentary ("we project onto her"). Thanks for your restraint right now. God save the King.

2 quibbles. 1. Rome may have absorbed the Greek empire but Hellenism absorbed Rome in the late Roman Empire. 2. Arthur is a British myth, not an English (Anglo-Saxon) myth.

My mind is tingling again. Thank you David.

In his notes on 'The Waste Land', T S Eliot cites a work written over 100 years ago by Jessie L Weston - 'From Ritual to Romance', which traces the Arthurian legends back 5000 years to fertility rituals in Persia and India. The Lance and the Grail originated as symbols of the male organ and the womb. All the King Arthur stuff is pure hokum. It is understandable why Mediaeval monarchs might have latched onto it as a means of reinforcing their own status, but it has no relevance in "real" history.

I could listen to him for hours , he is fantastic 🇬🇧

David David David .... its all an irrelevant fairy story .... when will you get to the 1900s and the consequent pickle we find ourselves in now ?

*Despite his use of the Beethoven work which includes the European Union anthem, it is believed that David Starkey is a spokesman for the far right Brexit movement.*

Love listening to you David and have learned so much from you! Gives us ideas on which to base our thinking about the crazy world we inhabit thank you so much 🌍

some kind of gypsy hypnosis that goes away with the first sip of water. I have always respected experts who can make you believe that black is white, that west is east, and so on. we also had a couple of such teachers, one of whom was convinced or pretended to believe that all languages descended from one parent language. moreover, it was impossible to refute it, as in сфыу цшер the legend of the Babylonian pandemonium, when God was angry with people because they built the tower to heaven. And he punished them for their pride by mixing languages and forcing them to speak in different languages, as a result they stopped understanding each other, the consequences of which we are still reaping. It's a matter of faith. Some believe that God exists, others believe that there is no God. Both are unprovable.

These are worth watching just for David’s stutters, let alone the learned insights

When you stutter sir I can feel your excitement for the subject. And I’m rapt.

Fascinating talk as always.

What was the Queen's, who I loved, family name before Windsor?

The original national myth of Briton is King Arthur

Most interesting but difficult to follow, will go through it again!

The national story of Britain is the story of the various invasions of foreigners to Britain from the time of the celtic Britons and picts,who were the indigenous natives, I.e.romans,angles,saxons,jute,frisians,vikings and lastly Norman, foreign invaders,wheras the Greeks today have managed to retain their national,ethnic, cultural, languistic background,Britain, or to be more precise,england has not,due to various invasions of foreigners,the nearest to surviving original British or Briton culture, would be today ,Welsh and Scottish, the rest is a mishmash of foreign invasions,which today is called the english,even its royalty reflect the foreign invasions ie the uk royals are mainly of german origin from the hanoverian Georgians ,brought in to replace the Stuart Kings,who were English Scottish French origin,so the national identity of england is a mishmash of invaders,Wales has retained its original national identity,as has Scotland, and these country's cannot be included in the english mishmash,of national identity.

Britain has not given up creating it’s myth. The WW2 “Standing Alone” Forgets to mention the wider British Empire. Britain was not truly “Alone”.

Z I G GURBAN

Wonderful!

For America it would be the Revolution War..right??

The contractual relationship between authority and citizenry, from Alfred's appeal to the people of Wessex, through the consent of Edward The Confessor and Aethelred The Unready to Magna Carta, to Oxford Provisions, to Westminster Provisions, to Parliament, and so on. "A rule by consent" as David says! Which, BTW, was the center point of the American revolution! Thatcher and Johnson are great examples of this as well! Rule Britannia! The freedom-loving world thanks you for that! And for your ever-changing and ever-inclusive language that is open to all while never compromising the most important issue - Freedom! Thank you!

Dear David Starkey, DO READ DAVID. Re: Prof Maurice Fraser. Many years ago you were my brother's tutor, the late Professor Maurice Fraser at LSE. I get the odd goosebumps listening to you as I do ,there are the odd scintilla's ofy brother's syntax and even strands of his reknowned rhetoric I hear echoing back. He was taken from us way too soon at 55. His Times Full page Obit does a good job of summing him up. The acorn didn't fall far from the tree with myself and Maurice. Both of us own more of John Locke and Hobbs than most post /Greco-Roman Philosophers. I am a keen follower of Stoicism. Not only from Epectitus Socrates And Marcus Aurelkus, but through the centuries via the French Philosophers et al. Anyway Dr Starkey, thank you for being there at the beginning of a great academics career. Sorely missed.(Ken Minogue and...? My memory isn't what it was...) Jay J Fraser.

Interesting that myths could become more powerful than facts. Nonetheless, not a surprise, considering Anglo sphere democratic principles were built on the foundations of antiquity. Myths played a major role within Greek and Roman societies.

Seriously david I think you're absolutely amazing but at points this is near unwatchable with you stuttering and blurting things out. In genuinely not having a go. Your knowledge on this country is something I wish I had 3% of but surely a bit of editing wouldn't go amiss?

Part 4: Great talk, reminded me of A.J. P. Taylor clear and conversational detailed and of a whole picture. Ok so i agree good riddance to the King Arthor myth and no one knows much of who Alfred was. i cannot agree with the attempt to be Janus faced and have the myth of Island England from Henry but also the Brittiana Rules the Waves of Empire. Its contradictory, in these two straggled narratives. But if I can carry on pushing for Hobbes. With Hobbes we get at once: 1. The idea of the single person alone like Robinson Cruso later taken up in 19th century by American writers like Emerson and Thoreau, and in post-World War 2 movies selfishness is the only morality when alone but really the conditions of morality do not exist alone; 2. The idea of a limited Sovereign State of laws with power and consent for legitimacy; 3. The disenchanted "scientific" account of man as following and in accordance with a law of nature and his thin contractual legal limits, as a legal account of behaviour in pride and right constructs a quasi-natural law out of this. this mixture of science and right, contract and legitimacy at once is meant to refer, not the to limited person or state, but the unlimited totality of nature, all humans who have ever been and will be. so not only is it a scientific reduction, it legitimises its spread far beyond its origin and genesis in the 17th century England and Europe of the Civil War and the Thirty Years War due to the linking of laws of nature and natural law. 4.It can be read as legitimising absolute power of a sovereign or the absolute need for consent to the law for its legitimacy. Consequence is though from thinking how they are related; the consent for legitimacy can only ever flow from the ground and reason of self interest in his picture. So speech can only ever be understood as an expression of self interest, a priori. Now while Hobbes is living in the era and consequences of the reformation, his myth of science of man, was a myth that was able to set political consent and legitimacy as an abstractly separate issue from attachments to particular religions particular mere old time myths perhaps. Thus the abstraction and separation of Church and State and the separation of public and private matters. This helped to end the massive wars in Europe over religion and is universal until Rousseau the French Revolution the Terror and Napoleon. But in this return of Europe to massive wars they were really only playing out consequences and tweeking of Hobbes his science his law and his abstracting out all non-mediated aesthetics, moral content, from the issues such that in the end the private sphere will be consumed by it. So Hobbes set the terms of the world we still live in today with his "realist" approach to power and ground in freedom and right but only in the vocabulary and form of practical reason the sovereign in science will allow. It seems clear to me so long as self-interest is the bottom line it will be unable to really bring deeply felt religious views to the table as these are often anti theatrical to self interest but in many different ways. But they are not different in the sense of so much different content to the basic Hobbesian structure they are antithetical to the Hobbesian picture in total. Hobbes and religion are Incongruent. However no one wants a divine right of some king or religious leader to decree law to us. Hobbes creation myth for England Britain and everywhere else in the world that is, was and will be. Father of the science of man and rights of man, to have no limits in its claims over people. Alternative view from the legal case on International law and following the rescue of the survivors of the sinking of Mignonette: R. v Dudley and Stephens (1884). Risk is though making law constitutive of morality. The only thing of more of a threat to life than: just a state of punishment, is a state that pays people when they do good things or their duty. Since this will empty those terms of semantic value and turn them into self interest.

It would be wonderful if these talks could be presented as a compilation of essays. 1. "Starkey's Rule", etc. That's when I'd part with cold, hard cash.