Dale, an LBC talk show presenter, is hosting a series of conversations with a variety of guests during the first week and a bit of this year's Fringe. Today's guest was historian David Starkey. He's best known to the public as a TV presenter of (almost exclusively) English history, and for his controversial, views on politics shows like the BBC's Question Time.
He began on a note that certainly chimed with me, saying that whatever you were trying to put it across, be it university lecture, TV programme or whatever, one of the keys to getting your information across was to make sure it was also entertaining, because that's what keeps people's attention. And, true to that philosophy, Starkey was often very funny, sometimes erudite, and he tells a good story. Dale really had very little to do in prompting him to talk. Just light the blue touch paper...
He admits he likes being the centre of attention and is, in his own words, still a "naughty boy". Which, in part, might be why he seeks to be so controversialist at times. This can result in some peculiar dichotomies. An openly gay man who's critical of, even bigoted against, other gay men who, as he sees it, want to emulate a straight lifestyle. If you've been on the receiving end of bigotry, as he admitted he had, it would surely make you avoid doling out the same to others? He also sought to try and provoke a Scottish audience, initially by dismissing Burns, but then presenting a view of the union of parliaments in 1707 that missed out several salient facts. He says it was the Scots who sought the union. There's a truth in that, if you stick to the aristocracy, but it ignores the riots in the Edinburgh streets in protest against it. And if the union was so popular why were so many British army garrisons built across Scotland in the years that followed?
The mask really slipped near the end, when he described Henry VIII building England as "an island fortress". Woolly thinking? Sloppy language? Not something I'd expect from him. This was the Little Englander mentality laid bare.
Dale never really pushed his guest so the result was somewhat anodyne. Starkey emerged as surprisingly entertaining, even likeable at times, but there's definitely something nasty lurking underneath...
Iain Dale : All Talk is on in the Gilded Balloon Teviot (already sold out) and Gilded Balloon at the Museum until 11 August.
No comments:
Post a Comment