top of page

Monarchy

Presented by David Starkey

2 x 50' for Channel 4

David Starkey's Monarchy series, at 18 one-hour films, was one of the TV events of the first decade of the 21st century. I directed the first two of the films, which followed English monarchy from its Dark Age beginnings in the debris of the Roman empire to King Harold's defeat by William the Conqueror in 1066. As the films show, many of the enduring characteristics of the English monarchy were laid down in this Anglo-Saxon or Early English period.

 

The first film, A Nation State, takes the story up to the final unification of England as perhaps the world's first nation state in the tenth century. The second Aenglaland, follows the Kingdom's struggle to survive in the turbulent world of the next hundred years.

 

I was a former student of David's at University, which perhaps encouraged him to ask me to work on the accompanying book. See here for my work, which takes the story up to the Wars of the Roses.

bottom of page