DAMNED BY HIS OWN WORDS

David Starkey used to rejoice in his reputation as the rudest man in Britain; indeed, I have heard him boast of it.

His self-pitying defence of himself in your pages (September) is, therefore, far from Roman and dignified as he claims. He excuses his lack of care with his words partly because he was comfortable in his own home and partly blames it upon the interviewer, who should have allowed him to “rephrase and re-record”.

A man who has made a career and a fortune out of an acerbic tongue deployed in the media must accept perishing by the same weapon. To expect a journalist to ask him to edit out one of his trademark provocative phrases is merely vain self-delusion.

His defence is also built on the fact that “damn” is a mild expletive merely used as “a numerical intensifier” by his generation. He offers “so many damn books” to argue that the word merely underlines the quantity. That is tendentious at best, solipsistic at worst.

Nobody ever says: “I have so many damn books on my shelves that it delights me.” The underlying tone is clearly negative: “I have so many damn books to read, I am swamped.” The tone of his comment was equally negative: “There would not be so many damn blacks (with such stupid views such as this claim of genocide …)”

The intensifier he claims to have used is also a negative modifier impacting our judgment on books/blacks.

Finally, Dr Starkey ignores the inherent racism of merely describing black people as “blacks”. Politeness alone (yes, I know) should dictate that we talk of black and white people, allowing our shared humanity as well as merely our colour to signify us. Consider how any politician would fare telling parliament, “Our policies will be good for blacks.”

Starkey’s casual use of “black” as the entire signifier he was willing to give that diverse group of humankind was overshadowed by his use of the word “damn”. His omission of the word “people”, was however, just as telling. There are indeed many black people, black voters, black parents and black children. They are not, however, merely blacks. Invoking Latin to underline the desperate unfairness of it all, he laments his spectacular fall at this pons asinorum.

Quantum meruit surely? Julian Johnson-Munday headmaster, culford school, suffolk