David Starkey Claims Rioting Fuelled By Culture Revering Study Of History Of The Middle Ages

In a controversial interview, constitutional historian David Starkey has provoked outrage by claiming that the recent riots were not in fact protests but where a result of the oppression and ostracising of white scholarly historians from mainstream culture.

“We were showing authority that we can do whatever we like. If we want to write hefty tomes after studying the Wives of Henry VIII then we will,” said Starkey yesterday. “These riots will keep happening until the government does something for us, say by increasing research funding into Tudor history.”

Mr Starkey was speaking during an interview in which he defended the mass looting and lawlessness that appears to have been perpetrated by groups of masked historians and economists as they smashed the windows of Waterstones, Foyles and antiques shops everywhere.

“It was terrible, they just charged in and took everything I had on Queen Elizabeth I, everything was gone,” said a specialist bookshop owner in Eltham. “They screamed at me that this was caused by the feminisation of history.”

Onlookers said that the gang of academic may claim to be protesting, but really it was just an excuse for robbery and intimidation.

“You see them hanging around in their 3-piece-suits, scaring normal hoodies. They wear belts and have their trousers pulled up properly; their shoes have laces in.” said one resident who did not wish to be named. “They aren’t even trying to have their pants slipping down to make it look like they’ve just been released from police cells like a normal person would.”

The controversy has been sparked after Mr Starkey claimed during a TV discussion that recent looting in England’s most significant cities, and Manchester, was conducted by a homogenous youth culture that had come to revere the urbane, sophisticated analytical style of the Oxford don, or a 60 year old television historian.

“You can’t make this them and us, you can’t simply say that this trouble is only caused by people who have rejected the urban, anti-authoritarian, criminal gang culture popularised by the hip-hop community,” opined one Guardian columnist. “This is all of our cultures, we need to reach out to those that know only Tudor history, to offer them the opportunity to study the Yorks and the Stuarts too.”

Starkey was unrepentant in the face of much criticism.

“Fuck da Feds, right, dey just want us all to be the same, innit, like, but ‘dis is us getting our fellowship grants back, innit,” he said, speaking on Newsnight. “When me an my mans Schama and Ferguson get warring we is gonna fuck them bruddars up badstyle, you get?”