TV’s Starkey reveals his torment over death of lover

He has been labelled the rudest man in Britain but historian Dr David starkey proves he does have a softer side.

The usually acerbic broadcaster tells me how he has been enduring a private turmoil of his own adjusting to the loss of his long-time partner who died aged 43.

speaking for the first time about the death of James Brown, who was 27 years his junior, he says: ‘It has been a horrible time.

‘It is particularly hard as his death was just so unexpected.’

starkey, 73, met the book designer in the bar at the London school of economics in the Nineties, and they had ‘a sort of honeymoon’ in Bologna spending the next 21 years together at the homes they shared in england and america. James died three years ago at the couple’s 18th-century manor house in Kent.

starkey was talking at the unveiling of a new exhibition he has put together at hever Castle, the Kent family home of anne Boleyn.

he admits work has been a distraction and he is currently trying to finish a biography of henry VIII. ‘history may be facts and chronology,’ he muses. ‘But I don’t think you can write a history book unless you have been in love.’

asked about the secret of his relationship with Brown, starkey once said: ‘There has to be a high level of mutual tolerance and a thorough enjoyment of each other’s company. It’s got to combine love and friendship, but also, you can’t be captious.’

starkey was the only child of poor Quaker parents in Kendal, Cumbria. his mother worked as a cleaner while his father was a foreman at a washing machine factory.

The future historian was a precocious child, born with two club feet, and by the time he was 11 he had read the whole of Dickens and large portions of the encyclopaedia Britannica.

When he told his mother he was homosexual, she never forgave him. ‘We maintained the shell of what had been there before but the topic kept coming up,’ he said. ‘I regret that we were never reconciled.’