David Starkey, King’s Hall, Ilkley
Popular and sometimes not so popular historian David Starkey was in Ilkley speaking about his latest opus commemorating the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta treaty.
This Ilkley Literature Festival event saw Starkey in his element during his lecture; similar to the one he broadcast on BBC2 recently, but with some Yorkshire references thrown in.
Like one of those stand up comedians who likes to prove he’s done some local research, Starkey said Yorkshire people were bloody-minded and rebellious then, as now. It was a frontier against the Scots and Knaresborough Castle was at the heart of the civil war that followed the treaty.
Apart from a few jibes against Ed Milliband, the rest of the lecture was a fascinating focus on what Magna Carta meant and means, then and now.
The audience loved it.
By Catherine Turnbull
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