David Starkey Joins Greenwich Talking Heads Season

Any assumptions around the 800th anniversary celebrations of Magna Carta are bound to be shaken at Greenwich Theatre when the country's best-known historian David Starkey talks on the subject and engages the audience in a question-and-answer session next week.

The Cambridge-educated grammar school boy, well-known for his caustic comments on TV and Radio 4's Moral Maze, declares that the famous charter of 1215 was not the result of "some airy-fairy principles but founded on sensible people doing deals".

His talking heads session at the theatre on Thursday, October 29, is the third of four after Germaine Greer and concert pianist James Rhodes, and concludes with Ruby Wax on Sunday, November 8.

"Audience reaction has been fantastic and this is definitely a model we'll be looking to repeat," said James Haddrell, the theatre's executive and artistic director. "We've had great sales so it's not hard to see it as an annual fixture at the theatre."

For David Starkey it will be the 45th lecture on his subject this year with another 28 to follow. "I'm the last person to ask how well it's gone but we've had some extraordinary audiences," he said. "We filled Guildford, Peterborough and Hereford cathedrals and had well over 500 people in Durham.

"People come for different reasons. Some are interested in me, some because they are interested in history but very often they are what we used to call politically active citizens. They're not necessarily linked to party politics but interested in their local communities, how they're run and how the country is run, which makes for an extraordinarily good debate.

"The whole reason for the lecture is that I think Magna Carta of 1215 has been misunderstood. It was declared invalid by the Pope within weeks and far from offering any kind of solution to the political problems of 1215, it led to the start of a civil war and to a French invasion and occupation.

"What you've got to understand is that the Magna Carta of 1215 is only one of a whole sequence of great charters in 1216, 1217, 1225 and so on right up to 1297. There are some wonderful personalities involved, including William the Marshal, who kept all the sensible bits of the original Magna Carter and got rid of the bad bits."

David, who knows Greenwich well and has had three major exhibitions at the National Maritime Museum since 1991, believes the story of Magna Carta is "a very strong lesson" for the politics of today.

"The clamour for pure, unsullied principles always leads to disaster," he said, "because the only way that one person's principles can be put into practice over another's is by force."

If anything, his naturally abrasive style has been welcomed at previous talks. "The atmosphere has always been very good-humoured," he said. "People relish the opportunity actually to talk about things seriously. There are no sound bites where I'm involved.

"The whole point of doing this is to get people to think and to debate. I'm not a politician trying to win votes. I don't have to flatter people but I take them seriously and engage with them properly. It's an exercise to get them to think about the past and about the present.

"I've never performed at Greenwich Theatre before but I've been at least twice over the years. I do see these lectures as a performance because people see a public lecture as something that's often terribly boring. It's got to be given in a way that's accessible, memorable and, dare I have to say it, entertaining."

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