All,
If you click here you will get to the Daily Mail’s reporting of David Starkey’s suggestion that Remembrance Sunday has become a ‘crazy religious ritual’ in which people had to prove they were thinking of the war dead.
Two things are very predictable here;
- David Starkey has a long track record of deliberately saying controversial things (click here for example for a discussion an earlier history society had about his comments on the 2011 riots – that was heated).
- The Daily Mail was always going to be outraged.
I am posting this not to make a judgement Starkey’s views (you can do that for yourselves), but rather to reflect on the question – why should we care what Starkey thinks? Why should we seek the views of a man who is after all an Early Modern specialist any more than any other academic ? We might also like to ask if quoting twitter responses is what journalism looks like in 2019?
Two questions.
- Is Starkey right?
- What does this latest Starkey spat (or indeed any other you care to pick) say about the role of the historian is the age of celebrity?
Have a think.
Mr Kydd.
So many people seem to get outraged so easily these days. Starkey presumably knows this and made his comments aware of the reaction they would provoke. it is a good way to maintain his profile as a popular (or indeed unpopular) historian.
As for “poppy facism”, I am not sure it exists (and if something like it does, is “fascism” the right word? “Poppy passive aggression” maybe?). I have never felt any pressure to wear one.