A History of White Males?

Kate Williams, author of ‘Queen Victoria and the Palace Martyr’ in our current edition, offers a firm riposte to David Starkey’s assertion that ‘a proper history of Europe would be a history of white males’. It is true that there has been a gratuitous downplaying of the dominant role (for better or worse) of white men in the continent’s history, and some of the objections to studying the legacy of Dead White Males (Shakespeare, for example) have bordered on the absurd. But, as Dr Williams points out, the thirst for history is felt by people of many different backgrounds and interests, in an increasingly diverse society. Kings and Queens and Prime Ministers act as a very useful spine at the centre of a vast body of interest, but history is not a proscriptive discipline. It should encompass all facets of the human experience, at all times and in all places.

Read the article by Kate Williams in The Telegraph.