‘You have a dash of oil from the Holy Land and a bit of Buddhism here, and there a touch of Sikhism. He also objects to what he calls Charles’s ‘pick’n’mix’ attitude to religion.

Churchill said that we were better governed when those who governed us were chosen from about l,000 people, than when chosen from 70 million.’ But I would like to have a governing class that had the sense of public duty, of seriousness about the national destiny that was exemplified by, say, the Dukes of Norfolk, or Winston Churchill. Would he like us all to be tugging our forelocks? ‘No, no, I regard myself as the equal of anybody and, in terms of intelligence, superior to most. I think that the disappearance of our old governing class and its replacement by a new one is actually a matter for regret.’ So he can get away with putting the MPs and peers in a box outside, and that’s not what a constitutional monarch should be about. We will now have this extraordinary miscellaneous collection of people, the sort traditionally referred to as the salt of the earth, in sloppy dress… Because what this coronation shows is that with the breakdown of the old rules, a huge amount of initiative has been handed back to the King. ‘It is the most extraordinary pot-pourri – the service seems to be a pastiche of the Book of Common Prayer and the liturgical equivalent of Poundbury.’ He also thinks it’s a mistake not to have the peers in their robes because there used to be a wonderful climactic moment when they all put their coronets on. He fears that the forthcoming coronation will be blighted by Charles’s enthusiasm for ‘what he calls modernisation’. ‘The service seems to be the liturgical equivalent of Poundbury’ Monarchy is nowadays regarded as simply a branch of show biz.’ I think it’s a sign that the producers were not taking it seriously. Where was Schama? I didn’t even see Andrew Roberts. Because I think the failure of the TV coverage was that there wasn’t another serious historian commenting at all. ‘What I tried to do with the Queen’s funeral, and also the King’s accession, was to talk about it as a historian who is also interested in the present.

He talks so seamlessly there seems very little chance of my ever asking any questions. His job will be to explain what the coronation is about, and indeed that is what he proceeds to do when I arrive at his house in Highbury. Of course he knows the history, going back to King Edgar’s coronation in 973, but will he also be expected to recognise the guests? Will he have to say: ‘Oh look, there’s Elton John?’ No, he laughs, he leaves all that to his co-presenters. David Starkey’s commentary on the Queen’s funeral on GB News was generally agreed to be the best of all the TV coverage, and now he is covering the coronation, and has made a three-part documentary about it for GB News called The Crown.

Elizabeth i david starkey