David Starkey, 73, moans his broadcasting career has been ruined by 'old, ugly women'

Bowl, I think you've hit on one of the crucial differences. MB is interested and cares about people, she sees history as a mosaic of individual fragments of lives and experiences and painstakingly recreates the personal to build a bigger picture of the past.

Starkey likes tales of power. That's why monarchy has always fascinated him. His big picture would be a giant Holbein portrait of the king. His people are pawns with a few knights and bishops. The one person Starkey has always claimed that no one else understands half so well as him and the person who has enthralled him is, of course, that bloated egotistical monster, Henry VIII.

I'm not saying that I haven't enjoyed his books, they are accessible, informative and waspish. But they lack the empathy that a historian such as Beard brings.

There seem to be some men who have never realised that if you listen to what women are saying, you'll realise that they are fully fledged people with rich inner lives, and once you do that you actually stop noticing what they look like anyway.

Or that might just be me - I actually have to think hard to picture someone, because they just are a 'them blob' in my head, of which what they look like is just one small, fuzzy, part

Mary Beard is fabulous. Oh how I’d love to sit down and chew the fat with her. She is a real thinker, rather than just a fact machine.
I saw her once, on a bus in the town where I live. I was too shy to say hello. Wish I had now.

One other thing I loved about her Romans series was how she was so into the tiny little details of everyday life - how people actually lived. Then she was able to bring all that and relate it to the big picture - i think that's not an easy thing to do and shows great intellectual grasp of a field.

Carry on doing what you do Mary. Being an intelligent woman in a male dominated field has never been easy.

He is also uncannily like Edward and Tubbs, so that doesn't help...

His popularity has waned because he has shown himself to be sexist, racist, out of touch and really quite a nasty piece of work.

It'll be that Starkey, mate! Not those pesky old talented female historians.

(Plus Mary Beard is just SO much better than you )

What does he see in the mirror?

He is quite a bitchy historian, too much opinion over fact.

What an idiot.

ha! I love that a few years ago he was bemoaning young, attractive women, and now it's old unattractive ones. Honestly, it's almost as if pretty much anyone is more engaging and appealing on TV than David Starkey...

Mary Beard is, indeed, marvellous.

I was just about to post but BowlofBabelfish has said exactly what I was going to say.

I shall add, in the interests of balance, that I enjoyed his magnificent eye-roll after a segment by Philippa Gregory when they were talking heads on a programme about Anne Boleyn. Even as I got annoyed that she was reinforcing all his prejudices against 'lady writers'.

I must stand up for Mary Beard.

She’s engaging, a fantastic presenter and brings a real enthusiasm to her TV work that just hooks you in. I never understand the ‘ugly’ thing - she always looks perfectly OK to me and generally has a fabulous line in necklaces. Not that it would matter if she did look ‘ugly’ - it’s her infectious enthusiasm that grips the viewer.

Starkey’s obvious disdain for women has been something I’ve noticed before and it detracts from his work. Be as rude as you like, but to dismiss women as he does means he diminishes some of his subjects - Elizabeth I is one of the greatest women in history. She was highly intelligent, multilingual, skilled at politicking and ruled the country well - most of our male rulers didn’t manage a fraction of that.

Shame on you sir!

I skimmed through the comments under the DM article (took one for the team) until I got bored, and I'm pleased to report they're overwhelmingly anti-Starkey. The words rude, arrogant, boring and unpleasant were getting good use.

From the article:

It's a stark change from 2010, when he branded the works of his female rivals — such as Amanda Foreman, who once posed naked holding copies of her book Georgiana, Duchess Of Devonshire — as 'historical Mills & Boon'.

He also complained that female historians are 'usually quite pretty' and keen to show off their good looks on their book covers.

So he doesn't like female historians being pretty and sexy, and he doesn't like them being old and ugly? So he basically doesn't like females in his domain?

You mean this sexy young man?

I wonder where Lucy Worsley fits into his world view, given she's hardly old or ugly but is all over the TV (hurrah!) and is hardly his number one fan.

Starkey is my guilty pleasure. I love the fact he’s incredibly, hilariously rude. And I do think he’s a good historian and always enjoyed his programmes. Although I can believe he said it but I’m not sure I’d trust Sebastian Shakespeare’s reporting on what someone said to him at a party.

Incidentally, this reminded me of Starkey's biography of Elizabeth. Nothing against (most) of the book (although it's been an age since I read it), it's an easily readable account of her formative years. There is nothing wrong, either, in limiting the scope of your book. What rankled was in the introduction where he set out his rationale for concentrating on the years before her accession. Historians, he says, often fall in love with Elizabeth but he dismisses the "bewigged and beruffled Gloriana... with her face caked in carmine and white lead... This Elizabeth interests me but rather repels me"

So, the apogee of one of the most successful women of her age or any other dismissed because Starkey thinks she got old and ugly and therefore "repels" (worth repeating!) him. Had he just written that he was curious as to the influences and experiences that informed the monarch, then fair enough. But he had to make it about how personally unattractive she became.

The rest of the introduction annoyed me too, featuring as it does plenty of typical boasts about how original he's been and how much cleverer he is than his readers (including the ludicrous suggestion that readers will see the very famous portrait of the 13 year old for the first time on his book cover).

Oh dear, now I better calm down for a bit!

Poor lamb.

It's interesting though, isn't it, that there's a certain type of person who immediately looks to blame others when things aren't going the way they'd like. You notice he isn't saying to himself, "What could I do to boost my career and get the jobs I want?" Instead it's like, "Everyone else is wrong! I want everybody else to change!"

He’s slwaus been a nasty little bastard.

I worked with him and hated it, has a well deserved horrible reputation in academia

So would it have been ok if it had been ruined by young, attractive girls instead?!
No, silly, cos they would only be on tv cos they looked nice. Tsk.
Anyway, I thought his broadcasting career was ruined because he was a nasty, bitter, racist and misogynist, clearly I was wrong. Those 100+ fellow historians who signed a letter stating he was a disgrace to the profession must all have been ugly, old women I guess.

I think he's done a pretty good job of ruining his own TV career by being a pompous insufferable sexist twerp. That'd do it.

As my mother would say "pot calling kettle black"!!!

Hmmm, I think some of his well publicised outrageous comments on race and women might have done that!

Stanley's other issue as a historian is that while he knows a great deal about Tudor court politics, he never really went far beyond the big boy at the top (certainly not too the boring peasants) and he sees every other period through that lens. He is unashamedly elitist and while the rudeness may have once been a bit of an act, he is contemptuous dismissive of anyone who formulates alternative theories.

He's probably just saying it for publicity in any case!