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Top 10 times Sir Geoffrey Elton slapped down David Starkey, all from the same review of 'The English Court from the Wars of the Roses to the Civil War', ed. Starkey. (Historical Journal, 1988).
1. "Starkey, who at least completed his dissertation (in 1973), has since then added mainly interpretive expansion with little further serious research"
2. "His vision is bold, indeed rash. It is also mistaken"
3. "He makes some claims which the evidence does not bear out"
4. "When Starkey gets some modest amusement out of the supposedly anachronistic idea of anything like the term or the fact of bureaucracy in the sixteenth century, he only shows some lack of wider knowledge"
5. "The discussion... is strangely slanted to support a view arrived at by dint of a general theory"
6. "Starkey makes assertions which do not seem to be borne out by the evidence"
7. "This sort of analysis is painful to apply and tedious to read, but it alone will show how seriously Starkey's handling of issues central to his claims misleads"
8. "I find his evidence at the very least bewildering"
9. "I submit that the general thesis of this book will not stand up"
10. "Starkey's sharp and often discourteous tone will, I hope, excuse my inability to take his attack lying down"
Ten pages, ten eviscerations. Must be some kind of record.
"It's time, Sir. The Regius Professor is ready to disembowel you now."
It has my longest-held ambition for a tweet about Sir Geoffrey to take off.
