In a 2020 podcast with Darren Grimes, British historian David Starkey said: “slavery was not genocide, otherwise there wouldn't be so many damn blacks in Africa or in Britain would there? An awful lot of them survived.” It was a repeat of a comment made a week earlier in an anti-Black Lives Matter article in The Critic magazine and one of a great number of controversial statements made around race, sexuality, culture, and religion. It was one, however, that hit him harder than previously, leading to: his resignation from the Mary Rose Trust; the withdrawal of his honorary fellowship of Fitzwilliam College in Cambridge and fellowships of the Royal Historical Society and Society of Antiquarians of London; his removal from the board of History Today magazine; the revoking of his Medlicott Medal by the Historical Association; and the cancellation of a book deal with HarperCollins. Starkey later apologised, stating that: “My principal regret is that my blundering use of language and the penalty it has incurred will further restrict the opportunities for proper debate”.

It was surprising, then, to see him at Hever Castle to introduce the opening of a suite of renovated rooms to the press, a project led by the estate’s historian Kate McCaffrey and to which Starkey gave advice. Starkey liked the attention, and wanted to direct the journalists present towards his desired headlines: “if you want a quote line: Anne Boleyn would be able to find her way to her original bedroom.” As it happens, over the half hour he spent introducing the project – leaving only nine minutes for McCaffrey to speak – Starkey said many, many more things worth quoting.



 


These are grand statements for the launch of four re-dressed rooms. There has been historical research into the place, building on previous work by Simon Thurley, but it isn’t as if there has been much new historical evidence specific to Hever to draw from for this new historical framing. Each room is newly dressed in hanging fabrics and antique furniture acquisitions, but the fact is that there was little evidence for what these rooms like in the time of Anne Boleyn and as such Starkey and McCaffrey have drawn from broader cultural references of the day.

More than one Holbein reproduction is positioned in front of a wall covering it gives inspiration to, while other design pointers were derived from inventories of palaces and homes contemporary to the Boleyn period. This is fine, and helps create a theme park experience of what such a place might have looked like to Anne Boleyn, but it doesn’t offer historical truths related to Hever Castle itself, as Starkey suggests, coming across more as a smorgasbord of historical referencing that may not quite be enough to offer an uncanny experience for the imagined return of Anne Boleyn.




The wider Hever Castle estate is a joy to explore. Attached to the stone castle is an assortment of architectural appendages commissioned by successive owners right through to 1903, when William Waldorf Astor purchased the place. The American-English inherited a fortune from to become the second richest man in America and having completed the Waldorf Hotel moved to England in 1891, with the extravagant transformation of Hever into a pleasure park his next architectural project. Head architect Frank Loughborough Pearson oversaw an enormous project employing hundreds of workers to repair the castle, create the Turdoresque Astor wing, laid out and planted the Italian Gardens replete with classical fragments, built a small power station, created the Kitchen Gardens, and excavated a 38-acre lake.

William Waldorf enjoyed the expanded Hever Castle until his death in 1919, upon which his son John Jacob inherited the estate. Becoming MP for Dover and owner of The Times newspaper, once a year Hever Castle would host a day out for all the paper’s employees who arrived on chartered trains from London to enjoy Lyons Tea Room food served in marquees, bathing in the lake, and dancing to military marching bands. The Boleyn history of the house, while fascinating, is but one part of its many interesting layers of political, cultural, landscape, and architectural past.


Back in Starkey’s rambling introduction to the four rooms, we have moved on to other issues key to the discredited historian’s interests: European politics and gender.

“Something we try to spell out is the importance of foreign relations. Suddenly this election campaign has come alive because Nigel Farage dared to mention Europe, breaking the absolute silence of the fact that we are not a hermetically sealed little island. I don’t believe everything he said, but the fact that he did raise it is important. In the same way you cannot understand the story of Anne Boleyn and the Tudors without the importance of foreign policy. The entire purpose of the state is to fight wars with other states, and this is why the feminisation of history has been so dangerous because essentially states exist to fight, that's why Parliament exists, to raise money to fight.”

Nigel Farage getting a mention in the launch of four rooms with Tudor decorations wasn’t expected, or particularly welcome. The idea that Europe wasn’t being discussed and somehow Farage broke the news to the electorate that the UK was culturally, socially, and politically connected to the mainland continent is nonsense. But it was Starkey waving the little red flag of “feminisation of history” that jumped out most, which he followed with the suggestion that Anne Boleyn possessed eyes powerful enough to control any man with a wink. He then added some more context around his views:

“Remember, feminism has made us think a lot about the relations between men and women in earlier periods. But it's got one thing absolutely wrong: women are not powerless. When a man is pursuing her sexually or for marriage, the woman is the boss. This is why there's the business of going down on your knee when you proposed. And what you see in the case of Anne Boleyn is a woman who turns that convention into genuine power, and she actually understands it.”

As a reminder, Henry VIII beheaded Anne Boleyn.




No feminist I know has ever suggested women are powerless, but it’s good of him to rebalance this imagined framing by telling us we are all wrong because, actually, women hold all the power through virtue of knowing powerful men want them and want to have sex with them. To evidence this, Starkey tells us about how, while married to Katherine of Aragon, Henry had been conducting an affair with Anne’s sister, Mary – in his words “the passive, submissive mistress.”

“It's a story of a king who has successive mistresses with these two sisters, Boleyn girls. First of all Henry has Mary from about 1520 to 1524, it's done as a total transaction. He actually gives her away at her marriage in 1520 when her father is in France and there is almost certainly an actual deal with her husband, William Carey, who from that point onwards is lavished with gifts whilst Mary sleeps with Henry.”

So, in argument against his perceived “feminisation of history,” David Starkey’s evidence that in fact women held the real power is a transactional wife swap. Eventually, Starkey ends his introductory remarks by telling us that the newly presented rooms at Hever Castle are about “how we pieced together from extraordinary fragmentary evidence the story of a family, of the building, of the love affair – and the story of the country.”




In her shorter introductory remarks, Hever Castle historian Kate McCaffrey spoke more generally about elements of Tudor interior design that interested the approach, and less about Nigel Farage, subjugated women holding power, and the “feminisation of history.”

“I was shocked at the unadulterated amount of colour that very wealthy Tudors lived amongst,” she said, adding that her team were “trying to show is that wealthy Tudor life was vibrant.” The actual decorations in the suite of rooms is minimal and in some instances disappointing – the new antique furniture sets the mood but appears to be from various periods and a bit dependent on what was available at the local antique stores, on close inspection the wall-hung tapestries are just printed reproductions without the texture or warmth, and while the sisal floor looks and feels a bit like what might have been underfoot in Tudor times - I give its survival a couple of months maximum under the heavy footfall of Hever’s summer crowds.

The rooms, however, are interesting when they are treated less preciously as how Starkey speaks of them. These rooms are four of the many spaces within a strange, complex Disney-like amalgamation of castle, landscape, faux-architectures, and now a home to concerts, tours, and weddings as a successful tourist attraction. Anne Boleyn was one character from an eclectic history which included the Astors, Jacobite Henry Waldegrave, the 15th century Feinnes family (distant relations to the Ranulph, Ralph, and Joseph, including James Feinnes whose beheading featured in Shakespeare’s Henry VI), John Fastolf (who Shakespeare – again – reimagined as Falstaff), the Waldegrave dynasty, and then the more recent 20th and 21st century family owners.




As such, Hever Castle is, if anything, a bizarre theme park of political, social, cultural, and architectural histories, best enjoyed through abandonment to any singular historical truth and instead taking pleasure in the aesthetic and historical mashup it is. If you want to consider the place other than an escapist daytrip from London, it could be considered through the lens of capitalism that Starkey is infatuated with. A castle of feudal England was purchased by tax collector and Lord of the Manor John de Cobham as mercantilism developed into early capitalism. It had already been slowly improved until the Boleyn’s ownership, and then was consecutively expanded and reordered to reflect the power, taste, and increasing finances of the owning families. By the time William Waldorf Astor moved in the world was deep into global capitalism, with all the associated inequality of wealth and modern-day mechanisms of interweaving politics and power and architectural showmanship.

Since 1983 it has been owned by Broadland Properties, with over 400,000 visitors annually to  exploring mazes, adventure playgrounds, richly planted gardens, enjoy concerts, stay in the faux-Tudor extension, and also take the circuitous whistle-stop tour of architectural and political history within the castle, briefly including the new Boleyn suite of rooms. The way the house has passed through the whole journey of our modern economic political system, from feudal to late-capitalism, is a fascinating historical lens to consider the place.

If Anne Boleyn didn’t have the optional audio guide, would she be able to find her way to her original bedroom? Objectively, it would be difficult considering that – despite her holding the power – Henry chopped her head off. But even so, if she was able to navigate the layer cake of history that Hever Castle and its gardens are to find these four rooms she might be able to find her way to what was once her bedroom. But once there, before popping her ghostly, reattached head onto the pillow and falling asleep, she may be wandering who on earth David Starkey is, pick up her smartphone, have a quick read of his Wikipedia profile, and be utterly astonished he was let anywhere near her former home.