David Starkey

Bestselling royal historian David Starkeyâ??s captivating biography is a radical re-evaluation of Henry VIII, the British monarchyâ??s most enduring icon.

"Powerful, personal, and purifying." Heather Sellers, author of Field Notes from the Flood ZoneBased on iconic representations of Bible scenes, David Starkey's poems in The Moon Shall Not Give Her Light attempt to recapture some of the strangeness of great Italian painters like Giotto, Fillipo Lippi, Bellini, Caravaggio and Gentileschi, while incorporating elements of contemporary life into work that is by turns witty, wild, sad, subversive and reverential. Twelve mystical and timeless cont crayon drawings by artist Rafael Perea de la Cabada deepen and argue with Starkey's often skeptical interpretations of the Gospel. The result is a reading and rendering of the New Testament like no other.

Academic Writing Now: A Brief Guide for Busy Students is a rhetoric designed to cover the basics of a college writing course in a concise, student-friendly format. Anything inessential to the business of college writing has been excluded. Each chapter concentrates on a crucial element of composing an academic essay and is capable of being read in a single sitting. The book is loaded with “timesaver tips,” ideas for making the most of the student’s time, along with occasional warnings to avoid common errors made by student writers. Each short chapter concludes with questions and suggestions designed to reinforce the chapter’s key elements and facilitate small-group interactions and trigger class discussion. A compact selection of lively, topical readings provides thought-provoking examples for analysis and discussion.

On a September afternoon in Santa Barbara, a private jet carrying the members of Poor Ghost—one of America’s most storied rock bands—plunges into the backyard of Caleb Crane, a retired insurance salesman. Poor Ghost moves back and forth between the impact of the plane crash on Caleb’s life, and an oral history of Poor Ghost, from its beginnings as a working-class punk band to rock icons.

On a September afternoon in Santa Barbara, a private jet carrying the members of Poor Ghost—one of America’s most storied rock bands—plunges into the backyard of Caleb Crane, a retired insurance salesman. Poor Ghost moves back and forth between the impact of the plane crash on Caleb’s life, and an oral history of Poor Ghost, from its beginnings as a working-class punk band to rock icons.

WINNER OF THE 2021 FUTURECYCLE POETRY BOOK PRIZE. In David Starkey's latest collection of poems, the world has gone awry. A mudslide destroys part of one city, floods transform another, good people die. Ex-wives decapitate photos of their ex-husbands, saints sit in Starbucks with arrows poking from their torsos, and neighbors prey on one another while "Christmas lights...hang all year from unpainted eaves." And yet even amidst the turmoil and tragedy, moments of redemption emerge: "the surf soughs and the wind, / redolent of salt and eucalyptus, whispers of grace," as the world continues working its magic on us, "like a lazy scrawl of cirrus across the horizon- / dawn morphing into brighter day."

What would the Son-of-Man get up to in present-day Rome? Would he wander the Galleria Borghese, loiter outside nightclubs, ride trams, tip accordionists? How would Keats feel about the neon Dior sign that flashes away above the Spanish Steps? Are there ways to avoid Vespas on the sidewalks? Rules for carving a Pieta? And exactly which painter is responsible for the ugliest Jesus in the history of Western Art? A tour of Rome like no other, the poems of Circus Maximus ask these questions and more. Join David Starkey as he shines a torch on the sights, sounds, mysteries and metaphors of the Eternal City. David Starkey is the former Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara, a senior Fulbright scholar, and a six-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize. His latest volume of poetry is A Few Things You Should Know About the Weasel (Biblioasis, 2010).

David Starkey's "A Few Things You Should Know About the Weasel" is a far ranging and fearless collection, of great humour and intelligence and sympathy. Ranging through philosophy and art and history - both global and domestic - these poems skillfully chronicle the darkness that is our current age and condition, and the pinpricks of light that may show us the way out. When a poem called 'Hitler's Art' begins 'I hate to admit it, but he wasn't bad', you know the poet isn't afraid to look at anything. The great philosophers weave in and out of these poems, hand in hand with the great criminals, and David Starkey is a step behind them, missing nothing. There's a dark joy to this book; it's feverish and beautiful, 'a glimmering aria', as one poem says, 'to everything that's yet to go wrong'.

The regal courts of the English Stuart Kings, from James I (1603-1625) to the ill-fated James II (1685-1689), were magnificent affairs. In a country otherwise given to increasingly austere Puritan ways of living, the royal court shone with a brilliance usually associated with the courts of the Catholic kings of mainland Europe. They were centres of great culture, patronage, ceremony and politics. The real importance of the courts, though down-played for many years, is now beginning to be fully recognised and this first major study of the Stuart courts in England, Scotland and Ireland examines them in their full cultural and historical context. Scholars of international reputation and up and coming, younger scholars have been brought together to give us an insight into many aspects of the Stuart courts. This book includes essays on culture and patronage of the arts and social history. What was it really like at the court? What rules applied? How did the courtiers behave? Finally, the crucial interplay between court life and political life, and politics, is examined in detail. This book is a major contribution to a flourishing area of scholarship and will be required reading for anyone interested in seventeenth-century history, court studies or the arts in the early modern period.

Wendy Bishop and David Starkey have created a remarkable resource volume for creative writing students and other writers just getting started. In two- to ten-page discussions, these authors introduce forty-one central concepts in the fields of creative writing and writing instruction, with discussions that are accessible yet grounded in scholarship and years of experience. Keywords in Creative Writing provides a brief but comprehensive introduction to the field of creative writing through its landmark terms, exploring concerns as abstract as postmodernism and identity politics alongside very practical interests of beginning writers, like contests, agents, and royalties. This approach makes the book ideal for the college classroom as well as the writers bookshelf, and unique in the field, combining the pragmatic accessibility of popular writers handbooks, with a wider, more scholarly vision of theory and research.

One of rock and roll’s iconic figures, Bruce Springsteen produced his most influential, and many would argue his greatest body of work from 1973 to 1987. During that time, he released eight studio albums, along with the mammoth live album Live/1975-1985. Among these records are five that are included on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time: The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, Darkness on the Edge of Town, Born to Run, Nebraska, and Born in the U. S. A., all of which came out during the period covered by this book. American critic and musician David Starkey takes a deep dive into Springsteen’s early catalogue, highlighting the brilliance of Springsteen’s writing and composing, his flair for the dramatic, along with his profound commitment to the gruelling lives of working-class people—and occasionally pointing out moments when ‘the Boss’ isn’t quite up to his own high standards. Starkey shares stories from Springsteen and those around him about the songs’ creation, and looks closely at the musicians and musicianship that brought Springsteen’s vision to life. Finally, Starkey’s writing—concise yet wide-ranging, analytic yet witty—brings it all together, telling the familiar story of Bruce Springsteen in an entirely new way.

From the author of Poor Ghost comes a poignant road trip novel following two middle-aged brothers, Chris and Andy Fairley, as they attempt an unlikely musical comeback in Japan. Chris and Andy Fairley couldn’t be more opposite—Chris, an uptight, ever-pessimist, and Andy, a go-with-the-flow hopeful. Their glory days seemed long behind them since their moderate success as a folk-rock duo and their relationship with each other fizzled out in the mid-1980s. But when their hit song is unexpectedly chosen for a Japanese car commercial, the men are given one last shot to revive their fame and friendship. They embark on a tour across Japan, but soon find their venues are far from glamorous: a wedding reception where they're asked to play their hit on repeat, a flower farm gift shop, a windy sculpture park, and a restaurant where customers catch their own fish. As tensions between the brothers rise and a strange reporter begins following them all around the country, the men aren’t sure if the band or their relationship will survive. With echoes of Andrew Sean Greer’s Less, The Fairley Brothers in Japan is a gently comic exploration of aging, family, and belonging. It’s a tale of two brothers, not just hitting the road, but rediscovering themselves along the way.

From the author of Poor Ghost comes a poignant road trip novel following two middle-aged brothers, Chris and Andy Fairley, as they attempt an unlikely musical comeback in Japan. Chris and Andy Fairley couldn’t be more opposite—Chris, an uptight, ever-pessimist, and Andy, a go-with-the-flow hopeful. Their glory days seemed long behind them since their moderate success as a folk-rock duo and their relationship with each other fizzled out in the mid-1980s. But when their hit song is unexpectedly chosen for a Japanese car commercial, the men are given one last shot to revive their fame and friendship. They embark on a tour across Japan, but soon find their venues are far from glamorous: a wedding reception where they're asked to play their hit on repeat, a flower farm gift shop, a windy sculpture park, and a restaurant where customers catch their own fish. As tensions between the brothers rise and a strange reporter begins following them all around the country, the men aren’t sure if the band or their relationship will survive. With echoes of Andrew Sean Greer’s Less, The Fairley Brothers in Japan is a gently comic exploration of aging, family, and belonging. It’s a tale of two brothers, not just hitting the road, but rediscovering themselves along the way.

Academic Writing Now: A Brief Guide for Busy Students is a rhetoric designed to cover the basics of a college writing course in a concise, student-friendly format. Anything inessential to the business of college writing has been excluded. Each chapter concentrates on a crucial element of composing an academic essay and is capable of being read in a single sitting. The book is loaded with "timesaver tips," ideas for making the most of the student's time, along with occasional warnings to avoid common errors made by student writers. Each short chapter concludes with questions and suggestions designed to trigger class discussion. The second edition has been updated throughout, with special attention to making the book even better suited to accelerated and co-requisite composition courses.

In What Just Happened: 210 Haiku Against the Trump Presidency (a Satire), David Starkey memorializes each week of Donald Trump's four years in office with a single haiku. While the poems sizzle with dismay and disbelief, they are often tempered by dark comedy as Starkey catalogues Trump's outrages in lines you won't soon forget." Here's a book of high-speed history for you, friends. It's easy to forget the Trump years, probably because we want to. But if we are to remember the past so as not to repeat it, David Starkey makes it easy and even pleasant to do so by wrapping each of the president's gaffes in that most durable of poetical forms, the haiku. "Literature is news that stays news," says Pound, and Starkey proves his point with poems that are funny, maddening, and razor-sharp." David Kirby

Creative Writing: Four Genres in Brief offers concise, accessible instruction in the basics of writing poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and drama, providing short models of literature to analyze and emulate, plus inventive assignments to inspire and motivate you.