'History is also about pleasure: the past and knowledge of the past is seductive'

The outspoken historian and writer is responding to my opening salvo inquiring what, in his opinion, are the key moments in English history.

Dr David Starkey, to give him his full title, is an Honorary Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, and along with the likes of Simon

Schama and Dan Snow, one of the most recognisable historians in the country.

He has a formidable reputation as someone who enjoys the cut and thrust of intellectual debate which is why I'm anticipating our interview to be a (one-sided) battle of wits, his arrow-like answers cutting down my questions like the French at Agincourt.

He certainly wouldn't win any awards for diplomacy. In April, he was criticised after pouring vitriol on his female rivals, likening their books to "historical Mills and Boon". This followed comments he made last year on BBC's Question Time programme when he branded Scotland a "feeble little country", called poet Robert Burns "deeply boring" and lashed out at the "awful" bagpipes. It's perhaps not surprising, then, that he has been dubbed the "rudest man in Britain".

But perhaps his pugnacious TV persona is just that, because during the 30 minutes we spend talking he is charm personified. That's not to say the likes of Tony Blair, Richard Dawkins and William the Conqueror don't come in for stick, they do, it's just dished out with a certain panache. Starkey is coming to the Off the Shelf festival next month to give a talk at Sheffield Hallam University about his new book.

I say "new" but Crown & Country: A History of England Through the

Monarchy, is actually a compendium volume of two earlier books

that he has revised and updated. "I'm a northern lad, so I have to be honest about that," he quips.

The monarchy is one of Britain's longest surviving institutions and Starkey's book charts its roller-coaster history from Roman times, to the War of the Roses, the fall of Charles I, Oliver Cromwell, Queen Victoria, right through to the present day. Which brings me back to my initial question. "The first really significant coronation was of King Edgar in Bath. It is the first big royal ceremony where Edgar is

honoured as emperor of Britain and revered as a second Christ. The choice of Bath was significant because it was both a nod to the past Roman empire and the new Christian monarchy," he says.

Starkey regards William the Conqueror as "perhaps the greatest man to have sat on the throne of England", although he notes, too, that he was certainly one of the most "unpleasant". However, William's coronation offers a fascinating insight into the medieval world. "When William the Conqueror was crowned King at Christmas in 1066 he was stepping into the shoes of Edward the Confessor. But at his coronation at Westminster there is so much tension over him being presented as the new king that when people began cheering his guards thought a riot was starting and opened fire on them. To me it's a wonderful symbol of the unease over the Norman conquest of Britain."

It was another coronation that first piqued Starkey's curiosity with the past. "I remember vividly as a boy of eight watching TV for the first time in my life and witnessing the coronation of the present Queen. It was the most extraordinary ceremony and I was utterly transfixed." His childhood home on a council estate in Kendal was not an obvious breeding ground for a future Tory-supporting historian. His mother was a cleaner and his father worked as a foreman in a washing machine factory, while Starkey himself was born "quite badly crippled", with a "double club foot." Yet it was these physical limitations that set him apart. "I was a dreamer with a fascination for books and photographs which led me back to the past." He went to Kendal Grammar School where a history master gave him the run of his library, fuelling this fascination.

He won a scholarship to Cambridge University and taught at the London School of Economics until 1988, by which time he had started his career as a writer and broadcaster. He gained a reputation for his forthright views on BBC Radio 4's debating programme The Moral Maze in the 1990s, on which he was a ruthless interrogator of "witnesses". This led to a succession of TV series on Tudor monarchs and the wives of Henry VIII which made him a familiar face on our TV screens.

Many people look on the monarchy with great pride, but as Starkey points out it has something of a turbulent past. "When Richard II was forced off the throne, in 1399, it was the first time since the Norman conquest that a king had been dethroned and deposed. The French are seen as terrible laggards for cutting off their monarch's heads, but in 1649 it was the English who were first to put their own king on trial for betraying his country and execute him without shame."

Despite such shenanigans there are some historical figures he feels who are worthy of praise. "Elizabeth I was an impressive figure operating in a man's world, she had the female ability to be able to deal with people and in that sense she was a bit like Margaret Thatcher," he says. "Women deploy power differently to men. Mrs Thatcher would hold a Cabinet meeting and if someone turned up with a cold she would go and fetch a cold remedy. Tony Blair, although I loathe his politics, has this feminine sensitivity in terms of knowing how to handle people."

Starkey also credits Prince Albert with putting the royal finances on a firm footing in the 19th century and for embracing the brave new world of scientific discovery. But if Queen Victoria's adored consort was a positive force for the British monarchy, he believes the late Princess of Wales proved to be a negative one.

"The modern monarchy sold itself as a middle of the road family

monarchy. It's not terribly exciting, it's not glamorous, it's about solid marriages and doing your duty." All this was changed, he says, by the "cataclysm" of Diana who transformed the image of the royal family in the public's mind. "The monarchy hasn't found a new narrative since."

However, he doesn't believe the monarchy is going to be done away with any time soon. "What saves the monarchy are the possible alternatives, because even the most ardent republicans would fight to save the country from President Blair," he says. "It's almost as bad as Richard Dawkins' anti-God brigade. I happen to be an atheist but what we are seeing is a new creed with Dawkins as high priest of this alternative religion."

Today's monarchy is far removed from the reign of Henry VIII whose coronation, Starkey claims, was regarded at the time as being like "the second coming of Christ the redeemer". But while the historian has some sympathy with today's royal family, it doesn't extend to our modern political leaders. He has long been scathing of Blair and Brown but is far from impressed by the coalition Government.

"If the best they can come up with is prattling on about a 'big society', which sounds like something out of Noddy, then the monarchy doesn't have much to fear."

But what does this tell us about history if all we can do is

regurgitate old ideas? "It is a complex puzzle and you can't understand the present without understanding the past. But history is also about pleasure, the past and knowledge of the past is seductive, it is full of stories that allow us to find out what we were and how we were."

n David Starkey is appearing at the Pennine Theatre, Sheffield Hallam University, on November 1. For ticket information, call: 0114 256 5567.