Woodes Rogers

Woodes Rogers (c. 1679 – 15 July 1732) was an English sea captain, privateer, slave trader and, from 1718, the first Royal Governor of the Bahamas. He is known as the captain of the vessel that rescued marooned Alexander Selkirk, whose plight is generally believed to have inspired Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe.

Rogers came from an experienced seafaring family, grew up in Poole and Bristol, and served a marine apprenticeship to a Bristol sea captain. His father held shares in many ships, but he died when Rogers was in his mid-twenties, leaving Rogers in control of the family shipping business. In 1707, Rogers was approached by Captain William Dampier, who sought support for a privateering voyage against the Spanish, with whom the British were at war. Rogers led the expedition, which consisted of two well-armed ships, Duke and Duchess, and was the captain of Duke. In three years, Rogers and his men went around the world, capturing several ships in the Pacific Ocean. En route, the expedition rescued Selkirk, finding him on Juan Fernández Island on 1 February 1709. When the expedition returned to England in October 1711, Rogers had circumnavigated the globe, while retaining his original ships and most of his men, and the investors in the expedition doubled their money.

The expedition made Rogers a national hero, but his brother was killed and Rogers was badly wounded in fights in the Pacific. On his return, he was successfully sued by his crew on the grounds that they had not received their fair share of the expedition profits, and Rogers was forced into bankruptcy. He wrote of his maritime experiences in the book A Cruising Voyage Round the World, which sold well, in part due to public fascination at Selkirk's rescue.

Rogers was twice appointed Governor of the Bahamas, where he succeeded in warding off threats from the Spanish, and in ridding the colony of pirates. His first term as governor was financially ruinous, and on his return to England, he was imprisoned for debt. During his second term as governor, Rogers died in Nassau at the age of about 53.

## Early life

Woodes Rogers was the eldest son and heir of Woods Rogers, a successful merchant captain. Woodes Rogers spent part of his childhood in Poole, England, where he likely attended the local school; his father, who owned shares in many ships, was often away nine months of the year with the Newfoundland fishing fleet. Sometime between 1690 and 1696, Captain Rogers moved his family to Bristol. In November 1697, Woodes Rogers was apprenticed to Bristol mariner John Yeamans, to learn the profession of a sailor. At 18, Rogers was somewhat old to be starting a seven-year apprenticeship. His biographer, Brian Little, suggests that this might have been a way for the newcomers to become part of Bristol maritime society, as well as making it possible for Woodes Rogers to become a freeman, or voting citizen, of the city. Little also suggests that it is likely that Rogers gained his maritime experience with Yeamans' ship on the Newfoundland fleet.

Rogers completed his apprenticeship in November 1704. The following January, Rogers married Sarah Whetstone, daughter of Rear Admiral Sir William Whetstone. In 1706, Captain Rogers died at sea, leaving his ships and business to his son Woodes. Between 1706 and the end of 1708, Woodes and Sarah Rogers had a son and two daughters.

## Privateering expedition

### Preparation and the early voyage

The War of the Spanish Succession started in 1702, during which England's main maritime foes were France and Spain, and a number of Bristol ships were given letters of marque, allowing them to strike against enemy shipping. At least four vessels in which Rogers had an ownership interest were granted the letters. One, Whetstone Galley, named for Rogers' father-in-law, received the letters before being sent to Africa to begin a voyage in the slave trade. It did not reach Africa, but was captured by the French. Rogers suffered other losses against the French, although he does not record their extent in his book. He turned to privateering as a means of recouping these losses.

In late 1707, Rogers was approached by William Dampier, a navigator and friend of Rogers' father, who proposed a privateering expedition against the Spanish. This was a desperate move on the part of Captain Dampier to save his career. Dampier had recently returned from leading a two-ship privateering expedition into the Pacific, which culminated in a series of mutinies before both ships finally sank due to Dampier's error in not having the hulls properly protected against worms before leaving port. Unaware of this, Rogers agreed. Financing was provided by many in the Bristol community, including Thomas Goldney II of the Quaker Goldney family and Thomas Dover, who would become president of the voyage council and Rogers' father in law. Commanding two frigates, Duke and Duchess, and captaining the first, Rogers spent three years circumnavigating the globe. The ships departed Bristol on 1 August 1708. Dampier was aboard as Rogers' sailing master.

Rogers encountered various problems along the way. Forty of the Bristol crew deserted or were dismissed, and he spent a month in Ireland recruiting replacements and having the vessels prepared for sea. Many crew members were Dutch, Danish, or other foreigners. Some of the crew mutinied after Rogers refused to let them plunder a neutral Swedish vessel. When the mutiny was put down, he had the leader flogged, put in irons, and sent to England aboard another ship. The less culpable mutineers were given lighter punishments, such as reduced rations. The ships intended to force the chilly Drake Passage off the tip of South America, but expedition leaders soon realised that they were short of warm clothing and alcohol, which was then believed to warm those exposed to cold. Considering the latter the more important problem, the expedition made a stop at Tenerife to stock up on the local wine, and later sewed the ships' blankets into cold weather gear. The ships experienced a difficult inter-oceanic passage; they were forced to almost 62° South latitude, which, according to Rogers, "for ought we know is the furthest that any one has yet been to the southward". At their furthest south, they were closer to as-yet-undiscovered Antarctica than to South America.

### Rescue of Selkirk and raids on the Spanish

Rogers stocked his ships with limes to fend off scurvy, a practice not universally accepted at that time. After the ships reached the Pacific Ocean, their provisions of limes were exhausted and seven men died of the vitamin deficiency disease. Dampier was able to guide the ships to little-known Juan Fernández Island to replenish supplies of fresh produce. On 1 February 1709, as they neared the island, the sailors spotted a fire ashore and feared that it might be a shore party from a Spanish vessel. The next morning Rogers sent a party ashore and discovered that the fire was from Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk, who had been stranded there four years previously. Selkirk was to become an inspiration for the classic novel Robinson Crusoe, written by Rogers' friend, Daniel Defoe. Rogers found Selkirk to be "wild-looking" and "wearing goatskins", noting in his journal, "He had with him his clothes and bedding, with a firelock, some powder, bullets and tobacco, a hatchet, a knife, a kettle, a Bible and books." Selkirk, who had been part of the ship's crew that abandoned Dampier after losing confidence in his leadership, was now more than willing to join a flotilla that included his old commodore as ship's pilot. Selkirk served as a mate aboard the Duke, and was later given command of one of the prize ships taken by the expedition.

After leaving Juan Fernández on 14 February 1709, the expedition captured and looted a number of small vessels, and launched an attack on the town of Guayaquil, today located in Ecuador. When Rogers attempted to negotiate with the governor, the townsfolk secreted their valuables. Rogers was able to get a modest ransom for the town, but some crew members were so dissatisfied that they dug up the recently dead hoping to find items of value. This led to sickness on board ship, of which six men died. The expedition lost contact with one of the captured ships, which was under the command of Simon Hatley. The other vessels searched for Hatley's ship, but to no avail—Hatley and his men were captured by the Spanish. On a subsequent voyage to the Pacific, Hatley would emulate Selkirk by becoming the centre of an event which would be immortalised in literature. His ship beset by storms, Hatley shot an albatross in the hope of better winds, an episode memorialised by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

The crew of the vessels became increasingly discontented, and Rogers and his officers feared another mutiny. This tension was dispelled by the expedition's capture of a rich prize off the coast of Mexico: the Spanish vessel Nuestra Señora de la Encarnación y Desengaño. Rogers sustained a wound to the face in the battle. While Duke and Duchess were successful in capturing that vessel, they failed to capture Encarnación's companion, a well-armed galleon, Nuestra Señora de Begoña, which made its escape after damaging both vessels. Rogers only reluctantly agreed to giving the inexperienced Captain Dover command of Encarnación, a decision that may have been eased by naming Selkirk as its sailing master. The privateers, accompanied by their two prizes, limped across the Pacific Ocean. The expedition was able to resupply at Guam, which, though governed by the Spanish, extended a cordial welcome to the privateers.

### Homeward voyage

The ships then went to the Dutch port of Batavia in what is now Indonesia, where Rogers underwent surgery to remove a musket ball from the roof of his mouth, and the expedition disposed of the less seaworthy of the two Spanish prizes. Dealing with the Dutch there constituted a violation of the British East India Company's monopoly. When the ships finally dropped anchor in the River Thames on 14 October 1711, a legal battle ensued, with the investors paying the East India Company £6,000 (about £ at today's values) as settlement for their claim for breach of monopoly, about four per cent of what Rogers brought back. The investors approximately doubled their money, while Rogers gained £1,600 (now worth perhaps £) from a voyage which disfigured him and cost him his brother, who was killed in a battle in the Pacific. The money was probably less than he could have made at home, and was entirely absorbed by the debts his family had incurred in his absence. The long voyage and the capture of the Spanish ship made Rogers a national hero. Rogers was the first Englishman, in circumnavigating the globe, to have his original ships and most of his crew survive.

After his voyage, he wrote an account of it, titled A Cruising Voyage Round the World. Edward Cooke, an officer aboard Duchess, also wrote a book, A Voyage to the South Sea and Round the World, and beat Rogers to print by several months. Rogers' book was much more successful, with many readers fascinated by the account of Selkirk's rescue, which Cooke had slighted. Among those interested in Selkirk's adventure was Daniel Defoe, who appears to have read about it, and fictionalised the story as Robinson Crusoe.

While Rogers' book enjoyed financial success, it had a practical purpose—to aid British navigators and possible colonists. Much of Rogers' introduction is devoted to advocacy for the South Seas trade. Rogers notes that had there been a British colony in the South Seas, he would not have had to worry about food supplies for his crew. A third of Rogers' book is devoted to detailed descriptions of the places that he explored, with special emphasis on "such [places] as may be of most use for enlarging our trade". He describes the area of the River Plate in detail because it lay "within the limits of the South Sea Company", whose schemes had not yet burst into financial scandal. Rogers' book was carried by such South Pacific navigators as Admiral George Anson and privateering captains John Clipperton and George Shelvocke.

## Governor and later life

### Financial difficulties and the Bahamas proposal

Rogers encountered financial problems on his return. Sir William Whetstone had died, and Rogers, having failed to recoup his business losses through privateering, was forced to sell his Bristol home to support his family. He was successfully sued by a group of over 200 of his crew, who stated that they had not received their fair share of the expedition profits. The profits from his book were not enough to overcome these setbacks, and he was forced into bankruptcy. His wife gave birth to their fourth child a year after his return—a boy who died in infancy—and Woodes and Sarah Rogers soon permanently separated.

Rogers decided the way out of his financial difficulty was to lead another expedition, this time against pirates. In 1713, Rogers led what was ostensibly an expedition to purchase slaves in Madagascar and take them to the Dutch East Indies, this time with the permission of the British East India Company. Rogers' secondary purpose was to gather details on the pirates of Madagascar, hoping to destroy or reform them, and colonise Madagascar on a future trip. Rogers collected information regarding pirates and their vessels near the island. Finding that a large number of the pirates had gone native, he persuaded many of them to sign a petition to Queen Anne asking her for clemency. While Rogers' expedition was profitable, when it returned to London in 1715, the British East India Company vetoed the idea of a colonial expedition to Madagascar, believing a colony was a greater threat to its monopoly than a few pirates. Accordingly, Rogers turned his sights from Madagascar to the West Indies. His connections included several of the advisers to the new king, George I, who had succeeded Queen Anne in 1714, and Rogers was able to forge an agreement for a company to manage the Bahamas, which were infested with pirates, in exchange for a share of the colony's profits.

At the time, according to the Governor of Bermuda, the Bahamas were "without any face or form of Government" and the colony was a "sink or nest of infamous rascals". Until Rogers obtained his commission, the islands had been nominally governed by absentee Lords Proprietor, who did little except appoint a new, powerless governor when the position fell vacant. Under the agreement that underlay Rogers' commission, the Lords Proprietor leased their rights for a token sum to Rogers' company for twenty-one years.

On 5 September 1717, a proclamation was issued announcing clemency for all piratical offences, provided that those seeking what became known as the "King's Pardon" surrendered not later than 5 September 1718. Colonial governors and deputy governors were authorised to grant the pardon. Rogers was officially appointed "Captain General and Governor in Chief" by George I on 6 January 1718. He did not leave immediately for his new bailiwick, but spent several months preparing the expedition, which included seven ships, 100 soldiers, 130 colonists, and supplies ranging from food for the expedition members and ships' crews to religious pamphlets to give to the pirates, whom Rogers believed would respond to spiritual teachings. On 22 April 1718, the expedition, accompanied by three Royal Navy vessels, sailed out of the Thames.

### First term

The expedition arrived on 24 July 1718, surprising and trapping a ship commanded by pirate Charles Vane. After negotiations failed, Vane used a captured French vessel as a fireship in an attempt to ram the naval vessels. The attempt failed, but the naval vessels were forced out of the west end of Nassau harbour, giving Vane's crew an opportunity to raid the town and secure the best local pilot. Vane and his men then escaped in a small sloop via the harbour's narrow east entrance. The pirates had evaded the trap, but Nassau and New Providence Island were in Rogers' hands.

At the time, the island's population consisted of about two hundred former pirates and several hundred fugitives who had escaped from nearby Spanish colonies. Rogers organised a government, granted the King's Pardon to those former pirates on the island who had not yet accepted it, and started to rebuild the island's fortifications, which had fallen into decrepitude under pirate domination. Less than a month into his residence on New Providence, Rogers was faced with a double threat: Vane wrote, threatening to join with Edward Teach (better known as Blackbeard) to retake the island, and Rogers learned that the Spanish also planned to drive the British out of the Bahamas.

Rogers' expedition suffered further setbacks. An unidentified disease killed almost a hundred of his expedition members, while leaving the long-term residents nearly untouched. Two of the three navy vessels, having no orders to remain, left for New York. Ships sent to Havana to conciliate the Spanish governor there never arrived, their crew revolting and becoming pirates mid-voyage. Finally, the third naval vessel left in mid-September, its commander promising to return in three weeks—a promise he had no intention of keeping. Work on rebuilding the island's fortifications proceeded slowly, with the locals showing a disinclination to work.

On 14 September 1718, Rogers received word that Vane was at Green Turtle Cay near Abaco, about 120 miles (190 km) north of Nassau. Some of the pardoned pirates on New Providence took boats to join Vane, and Rogers decided to send two ex-pirate captains, Benjamin Hornigold and John Cockram, with a crew to gather intelligence, and, if possible, to bring Vane to battle. As the weeks passed, and hopes of their return dimmed, Rogers declared martial law and set all inhabitants to work on rebuilding the island's fortifications. Finally, the former pirates returned. They had failed to find an opportunity to kill Vane or bring him to battle, but had captured one ship and a number of pirate captives. Captain Hornigold was then sent to recapture the ships and crews who had gone pirate en route to Havana. He returned with ten prisoners, including captain John Auger, and three corpses. On 9 December 1718, Rogers brought the ten men captured by Hornigold to trial. Nine were convicted, and Rogers had eight hanged three days later, reprieving the ninth on hearing he was of good family. One of the condemned, Thomas Morris, quipped as he climbed the gallows, "We have a good governor, but a harsh one." The executions so cowed the populace that when, shortly after Christmas, several residents plotted to overthrow Rogers and restore the island to piracy, the conspirators attracted little support. Rogers had them flogged, then released as harmless.

On 16 March 1719 Rogers learned that Spain and Britain were at war again. He redoubled his efforts to repair the island's fortifications, buying vital supplies on credit in the hope of later being reimbursed by the expedition's investors. The Spanish sent an assault fleet against Nassau in May, but when the fleet's commodore learned that the French (now Britain's ally) had captured Pensacola, he directed the fleet there instead. This gave Rogers time to continue to fortify and supply New Providence, and in February 1720 the Spaniards finally arrived in Nassau. Two alert ex-slave sentries, the presence of the Delicia of 32-guns and the frigate HMS Flamborough of 24-guns under Captain Johnathan Hildesley and 500 ready waiting militia, many of them ex-pirates helped cause the Spanish withdrawal.

The year 1720 brought an end to external threats to Rogers' rule. With Spain and Britain at peace again, the Spanish made no further move against the Bahamas. Vane never returned, having been shipwrecked and captured in the Bay Islands—a year later, he was hanged in Jamaica. This did not end Rogers' problems as governor. Overextended from financing New Providence's defences, he received no assistance from Britain, and merchants refused to give him further credit. His health suffered, and he spent six weeks in Charleston, South Carolina, hoping to recuperate. Instead, he was wounded in a duel with Captain John Hildesley of HMS Flamborough, a duel caused by disputes between the two on New Providence. Troubled by the lack of support and communication from London, Rogers set sail for Britain in March 1721. He arrived three months later to find that a new governor had been appointed, and his company had been liquidated. Personally liable for the obligations he had contracted at Nassau, he was imprisoned for debt.

### Activities in England, second term, and death

With both the government and his former partners refusing to honour his debts, Rogers was released from debtor's prison only when his creditors took pity on him and absolved him of his debts. Even so, Rogers wrote that he was "perplexed with the melancholy prospect of [his] affairs". In 1722 or 1723, Rogers was approached by a man writing a history of piracy, and supplied him with information. The resulting work, A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates, published under the pseudonym Captain Charles Johnson, was an enormous hit on both sides of the Atlantic, and catapulted Rogers for the second time to the status of a national hero. With public attention focused on him again, Rogers was successful in 1726 in petitioning the king for financial redress. Not only did King George I grant him a pension, retroactive to 1721, but the king's son and successor, George II, reappointed him as governor on 22 October 1728.

The Bahamas did not come under external threat during Rogers' second term, but the reappointed governor had difficulties. Still seeking to bolster the island's defences, Rogers sought imposition of a local tax. The assembly, which had been instituted in Rogers' absence, objected, and Rogers responded by dissolving it. The governmental battle exhausted Rogers, who again went to Charleston in early 1731 in an attempt to recover his health. Though he returned in July 1731, he never truly regained his health, and died in Nassau on 15 July 1732.

A harbour-side street in Nassau is named for Rogers. "Piracy expelled, commerce restored" remained the motto of the Bahamas until the islands gained independence in 1973.

British sea captain and governor of the Bahamas


Preening

Preening is a found in birds that involves the use of the beak to position feathers, interlock feather that have become separated, clean plumage, and keep ectoparasites in check. Feathers contribute significantly to a bird's insulation, waterproofing and aerodynamic flight, and so are vital to its survival. Because of this, birds spend considerable time each day maintaining their feathers, primarily through preening. Several actions make up preening behaviour. Birds fluff up and shake their feathers, which helps to "rezip" feather barbules that have become unhooked. Using their beaks, they gather preen oil from a gland at the base of their tail and distribute this oil through their feathers. They draw each contour feather through their bill, nibbling it from base to tip.

Over time, some elements of preening have evolved to have secondary functions. Ritualised preening has become a part of some courtship displays, for example. It is also a displacement activity that can occur when birds are subjected to two conflicting drives. Though primarily an individual function, preening can be a social activity involving two or more birds – a behaviour known as allopreening. In general, allopreening occurs either between two members of a mated pair or between flock members in a social species. Such behaviour may assist in effective grooming, in the recognition of individuals (mates or potential sexual partners), or in reducing or redirecting potential aggressive tendencies in social species. Most allopreening is confined to the head and neck, smaller efforts being directed towards other parts of the body.

Ingestion of pollutants or disease-causing organisms during preening can lead to problems ranging from liver and kidney damage to pneumonia and disease transmission. Injury and infection can cause overpreening in caged birds, as can confining a bird with a dominant or aggressive cage mate.

## Etymology

The use of the word preen to mean the tidying of a bird's feathers dates from Late Middle English. It appears to be a variant of the word prune; one now-obsolete definition of prune meant "anoint", based on the Latin ungere, which had the same meaning. This usage was combined with the Scottish and northern English dialect preen meaning "pierce" or "pin", due to the "pricking" action of the bird's beak during preening.

## Importance

Preening is a maintenance behaviour used by all birds to care for their feathers. It is an innate behaviour; birds are born knowing the basics, but there is a learned component. Birds that are hand-reared without access to a role model have abnormalities in their preening behaviours. Despite spending considerable time in their efforts, they do not use proper techniques to groom effectively and may do a poor job overall as a result. Displaced feathers can cause birds considerable trouble; such feathers might become damaged, could interrupt the smooth flow of air over a flying bird, or might allow the bird's body heat to escape. Preening allows a bird to reposition such displaced feathers. There is evidence that filoplumes, specialised feathers buried under a bird's outer covering of contour feathers, help to signal when contour feathers have been displaced. Mechanoreceptors at the base of the filoplumes only fire when contour feathers are displaced or the filoplume moves. Preening enables birds to remove dirt and parasites from their plumage, and assists in the waterproofing of feathers. During moult, birds remove the sheaths from around their emerging pin feathers while preening.

Because feathers are critical to a bird's survival – contributing to insulation, waterproofing and aerodynamic flight – birds spend a great deal of time maintaining them. When resting, birds may preen at least once an hour. Studies on multiple species have shown that they spend an average of more than 9% of each day on maintenance behaviours, preening occupying over 92% of that time, though this figure can be significantly higher. Studies found that some gull species spent 15% of daylight hours during the breeding season preening, while another showed that common loons spent upwards of 25% of their day preening. In most of the studied species where the bird's sex could be determined in the field, males spent more time preening than females, though this was reversed in ducks. Some ratites, which are not dependent on their feathers for flight, spend far less time on maintenance behaviours. One study of ostriches found that they spent less than 1% of their time engaged in such behaviours.

## Preen oil

Fully grown feathers are essentially dead structures, so it is vital that birds have some way to protect and lubricate them. Otherwise, age and exposure cause them to become brittle. To facilitate that care, many bird species have a preen or uropygial gland, which opens above the base of the tail feathers and secretes a substance containing fatty acids, water, and waxes. The bird gathers this substance on its bill and applies it to its feathers. The gland is generally larger (in relation to body size) in waterbirds, including terns, grebes and petrels. However, studies have found no clear correlation between the size of the gland and the amount of time a species spends in the water; it is not consistently largest in those species that spend the most time in the water.

Preen oil plays a role in reducing the presence of parasitic organisms, such as feather-degrading bacteria, lice and fungi, on a bird's feathers. One study of Eurasian hoopoes showed that the presence of symbiotic bacteria (Enterococcus faecalis) in their preen oil inhibited the growth of the feather-degrading bacteria Bacillus licheniformis. Enterococcus faecalis did this by releasing a bacteriocin. Female hoopoes transfer preen oil onto their brood patches and eggs, which results in the transfer of bacteria as well. Preen oil and bacteria are rubbed into microscopic pits on the surface of the eggs during incubation. This alters the colour of the eggs (darkening them) but there is also evidence that the bacteria may help to protect the developing chicks. Other studies have shown that removing or restricting access to the uropygial gland typically results in a higher bacterial parasite load on the plumage, though not necessarily of feather-degrading bacterial species. Preen oil may play a part in protecting at least some species from some internal parasites; a study of the incidence of avian malaria in house sparrows found that uninfected birds had larger uropygial glands and higher antimicrobial activity in those glands than infected birds did. There is even evidence that the foul-smelling preen oil of hoopoes and wood hoopoes may help to repel mammalian predators.

Preen oil helps to maintain the waterproofing of a bird's plumage. Though the oil does not provide any direct waterproofing agent, it helps to extend the life of the feather – including the microscopic structures (the barbs and barbules) which interlock to create the waterproof barrier.

While most species have a preen gland, the organ is missing in the ratites (emu, ostriches, cassowaries, rheas and kiwis) and some neognath birds, including bustards, woodpeckers, a few parrots and pigeons. Some species that lack a preen gland instead have powder down feathers which continually break down into a fine dust that the birds apply to their contour feathers while preening. These powder down feathers may be scattered throughout the bird's plumage or concentrated into dense patches. As well as helping to waterproof and preserve the bird's feathers, powder down can give a metallic sheen to the plumage.

## Preening action

A bird's plumage is primarily made up of two feather types: firm vaned or pennaceous feathers on the surface, with softer down feathers underneath. Both feather types have a central shaft with narrower branching from that shaft. Pennaceous feathers also have much smaller barbules branching from the entire length of each barb; these barbules have tiny hooks along their length, which interlock with the hooks of neighbouring barbules. Barbules can become unhooked as a result of a bird's daily activities – dislodged when the bird brushes up against vegetation, for instance, or when it interacts with another bird during fighting or mating. Preening may involve two kinds of bill actions: nibbling (or mandibulating) while working the feather from base to tip, or stroking with the bill either open or closed. The nibbling action is the one used most often; it is more effective than stroking for applying preen oil, removing ectoparasites, rejoining unzipped barbules, and rearranging feathers. The stroking action is typically done in the direction the feathers lie, with the bill either opened or closed. Stroking is used to apply preen oil, as well as to dry and smooth plumage. Grebes stroke more vigorously with an open bill – a behaviour known as "stropping". Penguins use their whole heads to stroke, in a motion referred to as "wiping". Birds regularly fluff up their plumage and repeatedly shake their bodies while preening. Experiments have shown that the shaking action can "rezip" a majority of split feather barbules.

Birds cannot use their beaks to apply preen oil to their own heads. Instead, many use their feet in an action called scratch-preening. Once they have gathered preen oil on their beak, they scrape a foot across their bill to transfer the oil, and then scratch the oil into the feathers on their head. Longer-necked birds may rub their head directly on their uropygial gland. Some species (including nightjars, herons, frigatebirds, owls and pratincoles) have comb-like serrations on the claw (a pectinate claw) of the middle toe which may aid in scratch-preening. Some species stretch their leg over their lowered wing to reach their head (known as "indirect" scratching), while others extend their leg between their wing and their body (known as "direct" scratching). There is some evidence that the method used by a species may be related to its ecology. For instance, New World warblers that are primarily arboreal tend to be overwing scratchers, while those that spend significant time on the ground are typically underwing scratchers. In general, preening takes place while the bird is perched, on the ground, or swimming, but some of the more aerial species (including swifts, swallows, terns and albatrosses) preen while flying. Many birds have a slight overhang at the tip of their upper mandible. Experiments suggest that this allows birds to apply shearing forces that kill the flat-bodied feather lice; the removal of the bill tip caused an increase in feather lice due to ineffective preening.

Preening is often done in association with other maintenance behaviours, including bathing, dusting, sunning, oiling or anting, and can either precede or follow these other behaviours. All birds typically preen after bathing. Groups of birds sometimes all groom individually at the same time. This has been seen in species ranging from herons to blackbirds.

## Secondary functions

Preening may help to send sexual signals to potential mates because plumage colouration (which can be altered by the act of preening) can reliably reflect the health or "quality" of its bearer. In some species, preen oil is used to cosmetically colour the plumage. During the breeding season, the preen oil of the great white pelican becomes red-orange, imparting a pink flush to the bird's plumage. The preen oil of several gull and tern species, including Ross's gull, contains a pink colourant which does the same. The heads of these birds typically show little pink, because of the difficulty of reaching those areas with preen oil. The yellow feathers of the great hornbill are also cosmetically coloured during preening. The preen oil of the Bohemian waxwing increases the UV reflectance of its feathers. Ritualised preening is used in courtship displays by several species, particularly ducks; such preening is typically designed to draw attention to a modified structure (such as the sail-shaped secondaries of the drake mandarin duck) or distinctive colour (such as the ) on the bird. Mallards of both sexes will lift a wing so that the brightly coloured speculum is showing, then will place their bill behind the speculum as if preening it. Courtship preening is more conspicuous than is preening for feather maintenance, using more stereotypical movements.

Preening may be performed as a displacement activity. In some cases, it is done in place of another activity that birds are strongly motivated, but unable, to do. In one study, black-headed gulls which were prevented from incubating a full clutch of eggs (by the removal of eggs from their nest) responded by preening and nest building – both displacement activities. When all three eggs in their regular clutch were removed, the gulls showed a significant increase in the amount of time they spent preening. The conflict between two incompatible drives, such as incubating and escape, can lead a bird to engage in displacement activities. Nesting Sandwich and common terns preen when they have been alarmed by a potential predator or when they have had an aggressive encounter with a neighbouring bird, for instance. Fighting European starlings will break off their battles to preen.

## Allopreening

Although preening is primarily an individual behaviour, some species indulge in allopreening, one individual preening another. It is not particularly common among birds, though species from at least 43 families are known to engage in the mutual activity. Most allopreening activity concentrates on the head and neck, a lesser amount being directed towards the and and an even smaller percentage applied to the . A few species are known to allopreen other areas, including the rump, tail, belly and underwing.

Several hypotheses have been advanced to explain the behaviour: that it assists in effective grooming, that it assists in recognition of individuals (mates or potential sexual partners), and that it assists in social communication, reducing or redirecting potential aggressive tendencies. These functions are not mutually exclusive. Evidence suggests that different species may participate for different reasons, and that those reasons may change depending on the season and the individuals involved. In most cases, allopreening involves members of the same species, although some cases of interspecific allopreening are known; the vast majority of these involve icterids, though at least one instance of mutual grooming between a wild black vulture and a wild crested caracara has been documented. Birds seeking allopreening adopt specific, ritualised postures to signal so; they may fluff their feathers out or put their heads down. Captive birds of social species that normally live in flocks, such as parrots, will regularly solicit preening from their human owners.

There is some evidence that allopreening may help to keep in good condition those feathers that a bird cannot easily reach by itself; allopreening activities tend to focus on the head and neck. It may also help to remove ectoparasites from those hard-to-reach areas. Allopreening is most common among species that are regularly in close physical contact due to flocking or social behaviours, where such contact allows for easier transfer of ectoparasites between individuals. In one study, Macaroni penguins that frequently allopreened had significantly fewer ticks on their heads and necks than those that did not. Green wood hoopoes, a flocking species with a complex hierarchy, show similar frequencies of initiating and reciprocating allopreening of the head and neck regardless of social status, time of year or group size, which suggests that such activity is primarily related to feather hygiene.

Most allopreening is done between the two members of a mated pair, and the activity appears to play an important role in strengthening and maintaining pair bonds. It is more common in species where both parents help to raise the offspring and correlates with an increased likelihood that partners will remain together for successive breeding seasons. Allopreening often features as part of the "greeting ceremony" between the members of a pair in species such as albatrosses and penguins, where partners may be separated for a relatively long period of time, and is far more common among sexually monomorphic species (that is, species where the sexes look outwardly similar). It appears to inhibit or redirect aggression, as it is typically the dominant bird that initiates the behaviour.

Allopreening appears to reduce the incidence of conflict between members of some colonially living or colonially nesting species. Neighbouring common guillemots that engaged in allopreening were much less likely to fight. Since fights often lead to eggs or chicks being knocked off breeding cliffs, fewer fights led to greater breeding success for allopreening neighbours. Among social flocks of green wood hoopoes, rates of body allopreening (that is, allopreening of another bird's body rather than head and neck) increase with group size. Evidence suggests this type of allopreening reduces social tension, and thus plays an important role in group cohesion. More dominant birds receive far more body allopreening services than do lower-ranked birds, and lower-ranked birds initiate far more body allopreening bouts than do their higher-ranked flock mates. Body allopreening is only reciprocal when done between members of a mated pair; otherwise, the dominant bird reciprocates in fewer than 10% of the instances.

## Potential problems

If birds are exposed to some pollutants, such as leaking petroleum, they can quickly lose the preen oil from their feathers. This causes a loss of heat regulation and waterproofing, and rapidly leads to the bird becoming chilled. If waterbirds are exposed, they can lose both buoyancy and the ability to fly; this means they must swim constantly to stay warm and afloat (if they cannot reach land), and eventually die of exhaustion. While preening in an effort to clean themselves, they may ingest harmfully large amounts of the petroleum. Ingested oil can cause pneumonia, as well as liver and kidney damage. Studies done with black guillemots showed that even small amounts of ingested oil caused the birds physiological distress. It interfered with the foraging efficiency of adults and decreased the growth rates of young birds.

Allopreening may facilitate disease transmission between infected and non-infected individuals. West Nile virus has been found in the feather pulp of several species of corvid, for instance, meaning that birds that preen infected partners might become infected themselves. Even preening its own body may expose a bird to pathogens. There is evidence that water-borne avian influenza virus is "captured" by the preen oil on feathers, providing a possible route for infection. The ingestion of parasites during preening may result in infection; the tick-borne disease louping ill virus can be transmitted to red grouse if the bird consumes a tick carrying the disease.

Caged birds, particularly parrots, sometimes overpreen in response to being exposed to strong scents (such as nicotine or air fresheners) or as a result of neuropathy. Reducing exposure to the offending odour, or treating the underlying cause of the neuropathy (such as injury, infection, or heavy metal intoxication) can help to eliminate the behaviour. Confining a bird with an incompatible or very dominant cage mate can lead to excessive allopreening, which can result in feather plucking or injury.

Maintenance behaviour of birds


There's No Place Like Home (Lost)

"There's No Place Like Home, Parts 1, 2 & 3" is the season finale of the American Broadcasting Company's fourth season of the serial drama television series Lost, consisting of the 12th through 14th episodes. They are also the 84th through 86th episodes of the show overall. The three constituent episodes were split into two broadcasts; "Part 1" first aired on May 15, 2008, and "Part 2", serving as the two-hour season finale of the fourth season, first aired on May 29, 2008, on ABC in the United States and on CTV in Canada. The episodes were written by executive producers/show runners Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof; "Part 1" was directed by co-executive producer Stephen Williams, while executive producer Jack Bender directed "Part 2". The episode's title is a reference to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

The narrative takes place in late December 2004, 100 days after the crash of Oceanic Flight 815. The survivors of the crash team up with the Others, natives of the island where the plane crashed, to confront the mercenaries from the freighter Kahana, who have come to the island. Following this, some of the survivors escape the island, which is afterwards moved by Ben Linus (Michael Emerson). Flashforwards show the first actions of the Oceanic Six, those who are rescued, after returning home in January 2005, and their lives in late 2007. The cliffhanger from the previous season finale, "Through the Looking Glass," is resolved by revealing John Locke (Terry O'Quinn) to be dead and in the coffin that Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox) visits in that episode.

Production and broadcast of the fourth season were interrupted by the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike and following its resolution, the writers were unable to compress the remainder of season four into the five allotted episodes and the season finale was extended by one hour. Subsequently, the production schedule was compressed and post-production work was completed in three weeks, instead of the usual two months.

The second part was watched by 12 million Americans, making Lost the most watched show of the week, for the first time in the show's history. Both parts were met with critical acclaim. Matthew Fox's acting in his flashforward scenes was praised, as was Michael Giacchino's musical score. The episode's editing was nominated for both a Primetime Emmy Award and Eddie Award.

## Plot

### Part 1

In flashforwards to January 2005, the Oceanic Six—Jack Shephard, Kate Austen (Evangeline Lilly), Sayid Jarrah (Naveen Andrews), Sun-Hwa Kwon (Yunjin Kim), Hugo "Hurley" Reyes (Jorge Garcia) and Claire Littleton's (Emilie de Ravin) infant, Aaron—arrive in Honolulu, where Hurley and Sun are reunited with their parents; Jack with his mother; and Sayid with his girlfriend, Nadia Jaseem (Andrea Gabriel). In the ensuing media circus, a press conference is held, where they lie about everything that has happened on the island; claiming that they are the only living survivors and that Kate gave birth to Aaron on the island. Sometime later, Hurley's dad (Cheech Marin) gives Hurley his newly rebuilt 1970s Camaro, at a surprise birthday party. Hurley, however, becomes panicked and runs away when he notices that the car's odometer displays the numbers. In Seoul, South Korea, Sun visits her father and informs him that she used the money from her settlement with Oceanic Airlines to buy a controlling interest in his company because she blames him for her husband's, Jin-Soo Kwon (Daniel Dae Kim), death. In the final flashforward, Jack eulogizes his deceased father, Christian Shephard (John Terry). After the ceremony, Carole Littleton (Susan Duerden), Claire's mother, reveals to him that Claire is his half-sister; as she walks away, she smiles at Aaron in Kate's arm, oblivious to the fact that she is staring at her grandson.

On December 30, 2004, following the events of "Cabin Fever", Jack and Kate follow the tracking signal on the phone given to them by Frank Lapidus (Jeff Fahey), who dropped it onto the survivors' beach from a helicopter. They encounter James "Sawyer" Ford (Josh Holloway), Aaron and Miles Straume (Ken Leung); Kate returns to the beach with Miles and Aaron. Jack and Sawyer meet up with Lapidus at the helicopter, but decide to rescue Hurley, who is with Ben, the mercenaries' target, before leaving for the freighter. Meanwhile, Sayid arrives at the beach on the freighter's Zodiac boat and informs the survivors that they must go to the freighter as soon as possible because the mercenaries' secondary objective is to kill everyone on the island. He and Kate go after Jack and Sawyer, but are captured by Richard Alpert (Nestor Carbonell) and the rest of the Others. After unsuccessfully attempting to convince his crush, Charlotte Lewis (Rebecca Mader), to leave the island, Daniel Faraday (Jeremy Davies) starts ferrying people to the freighter. Sun, Jin, and Aaron arrive at the boat, only to discover a bomb, consisting of a large amount of C4 explosives, on board.

Meanwhile, in their quest to move the island, Ben, Locke and Hurley arrive at the Dharma Initiative Orchid station, which is disguised as a greenhouse. Ben sends Locke to the real part of the station and surrenders himself to Martin Keamy (Kevin Durand) and the other mercenaries from the Kahana, who had previously arrived. A final montage shows the Oceanic Six and Ben in their respective predicaments.

### Parts 2 & 3

On the island, Jack and Sawyer meet up with Hurley and Locke at the Orchid station. Jack and Locke once more argue about the nature of the island; Locke implores him to lie about the island once he and the other survivors leave. At the helicopter, Kate, Sayid, and the Others free Ben by ambushing and killing the mercenaries, except Keamy, who feigns death. In return, the Others allow Kate, Sayid and the other survivors to leave the island on the helicopter. Ben returns to the Orchid, where he gets in a hidden elevator with Locke.

Inside the underground part of the Orchid station, Ben puts every metal item he can find into a small compartment at the back of the room, while Locke watches the orientation video for the Orchid. On the tape, Pierre Chang (François Chau) begins to discuss time travel involving "negatively charged exotic matter" when the VCR malfunctions and the tape rewinds itself. Shortly, Keamy arrives and tells Locke that if he (Keamy) dies, the C4 on the freighter will detonate, due to a remote trigger linked to a heart rate monitor he is wearing. Regardless, Ben kills Keamy with no remorse or sympathy for those on the boat, in order to avenge his adopted daughter Alex (Tania Raymonde), whom Keamy executed. Ben seals and then activates power to the compartment he had loaded with metal items, blowing a hole in the back of it. Ben, now wearing a parka, tells Locke that whoever moves the island is forced to leave it and never come back; Ben must do it so that Locke can stay and lead the Others. Locke then goes to the Others, who welcome him home. Ben climbs through the hole and down a rocky tunnel beyond it into a frozen chamber, cutting his arm in the process. He then turns a very large metal wheel. As he completes the rotation, an eerie sound and white-yellow light soon envelop the entire island. Ben disappears, only to reappear several months later in the Sahara Desert (as seen in "The Shape of Things to Come").

Jack, Kate, Sayid, Sawyer, Hurley, and Frank Lapidus leave the island on the helicopter, but discover a fuel leak on board. In order to lighten the helicopter, Sawyer jumps out after whispering something in Kate's ear and kissing her. The helicopter makes it to the Kahana in the nick of time; they refuel it, fix the leak, pick up Desmond Hume (Henry Ian Cusick), Sun and Aaron and leave seconds before the C4 detonates. The resulting explosion kills Michael Dawson (Harold Perrineau), who is told that "he can go now" by a vision of Christian Shephard. The status of Jin, who is still on the boat, is left uncertain as a cliffhanger. Sawyer swims back to the island and laments the destruction of the boat with Juliet Burke (Elizabeth Mitchell). The people on the helicopter decide to return to the island, but as they approach, they see the island vanish in the white-yellow light. With nowhere to land, the helicopter runs out of fuel and the survivors are forced to ditch into the ocean. They drift in a rescue raft for several hours, where Hurley suggests that Locke succeeded in moving the island, but Jack refuses to believe it. Jack convinces the other survivors that they must lie about their experiences on the island, to protect those left behind.

That same night, the survivors are rescued by Penny Widmore (Sonya Walger), Desmond's girlfriend, with whom he is finally reunited. In keeping with the faked wreckage of Flight 815 found in the Java Trench, the Oceanic Six are dropped off near the island of Sumba, where they are found by local villagers.

In flashforwards to late 2007, following those in "Through the Looking Glass", Jack, Kate and Walt Lloyd (Malcolm David Kelley) all recount stories of being approached by Jeremy Bentham, the dead man in the coffin. Kate has a dream in which Claire tells her not to bring Aaron back to the island. In London, England, Sun confronts Charles Widmore (Alan Dale), Penny's father, who sent the Kahana to the island, and tells him that they have common interests involving the island. After finding out that Bentham is dead, Sayid breaks into the mental hospital where Hurley is staying and convinces him to go "somewhere safe". Jack returns to the funeral parlor, where he is confronted by Ben, who says that the island will not allow Jack to return without everyone else who left joining him. This includes Jeremy Bentham's body, who is finally revealed to be John Locke.

## Production

### Cast

The episode features the last appearance of actor Harold Perrineau, whose character Michael dies in an explosion, as a main cast member. The character of Michael was absent for the entire third season of Lost and returned midway through the fourth season in "Ji Yeon." Perrineau was disappointed that he was brought back to the show only to be killed and that Michael does not get a chance to reunite with his son, Walt, saying, "there are all these questions about how [the writers] respond to black people on the show ... Walt just winds up being another fatherless child. It plays into a really big, weird stereotype and, being a black person myself, that wasn't so interesting." The fate of Jin, who is also on the freighter when it explodes, is left uncertain. Actor Daniel Dae Kim was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol, which prompted speculation about his future on the series, due to co-stars Michelle Rodriguez (Ana-Lucia Cortez) and Cynthia Watros (Libby) leaving Lost after DUI arrests. This episode also marks Malcolm David Kelley's first appearance on the show since the third season, excepting a computer effects shot of the actor in "Meet Kevin Johnson". Kelley's character, Walt, was "benched" for the majority of the second and third seasons because the actor's growth was disproportionate to the amount of time that has passed on the island. The writers got the idea to show him in flashforwards in his older form while writing "Through the Looking Glass".

### Writing

Throughout season four, Jack and Locke have argued about the true nature of the island, whether it had supernatural powers and on how Oceanic Flight 815 crashing could be part of the survivors' destiny. Upon witnessing the island vanish at the end of this episode, Jack finally realizes that Locke was right. Jack then takes Locke's advice and convinces the other survivors that they must lie about the island once they are rescued. This is further emphasized by the fact that the same music is played during Jack and Locke's conversation and when the survivors encounter Penny's boat. Lindelof has also stated that Sawyer's message to Kate in the helicopter is a "critical plot point" in that it ultimately leads to the end of Jack and Kate's relationship once they return home (as seen in "Something Nice Back Home"). In terms of plot structure, the main action scene of the episode, where the Others and the survivors confront the mercenaries, was deliberately placed at the beginning of "Part 2" so that the remainder of the episode could focus on character development. Furthermore, all of the present time plotlines are interconnected by the C4 bomb on the freighter, even though the writers themselves have called the use of the bomb as a plot device "ridiculous". It was necessary, however, in order to keep both Michael and Jin from leaving the freighter with the other survivors.

The final scenes of the episode, particularly Ben turning the wheel, Penny and Desmond's reunion and the last shot of Locke in the coffin were kept secret, in order to prevent spoilers from leaking. The phrase "Frozen Donkey Wheel" was coined to describe not only the wheel that Ben turns, but also the final scene in which Locke is shown to be in the coffin. Only six people knew that Locke was in the coffin—actors Matthew Fox, Michael Emerson and Terry O'Quinn; writers Lindelof and Cuse and Jack Bender, the director.

#### Writers' Strike

The Writers Guild of America went on strike on November 4, 2007 after the writers had only finished the first eight episodes of the season. Show runners Lindelof and Cuse wanted to hold the eight episodes until they were able to produce more of the season, but ABC decided that the eight episodes would be aired from January to March, regardless of whether any more episodes were produced in the 2007–2008 season. After the resolution of the strike, ABC decided to produce five more episodes for the fourth season. This conflicted with ABC's earlier plan to broadcast seasons four, five and six in uninterrupted blocks of sixteen episodes each. Despite this, ABC prioritized scheduling Grey's Anatomy, Ugly Betty and Lost's returns all for April 24. The decision left the three unproduced episodes of season four "in the bank" to be used later in seasons five and six.

After the resolution of the strike, Lindelof said that the effect of the strike on the fourth season would be minimal and the season's story arc would be completed as originally intended. However, the first draft of the second part of "There's No Place Like Home," was 85 pages long, approximately 30 pages longer than a typical one hour Lost script. Lindelof and Cuse found that they could not compress the second half of the season finale into one episode and actually wanted to expand it. Subsequently, the show runners went into "advanced talks" with executives at ABC and convinced them to produce one of their episodes "in the bank", thereby extending "There's No Place Like Home: Part 2" to two hours. However, this caused a scheduling problem with Grey's Anatomy and Ugly Betty, which were both already scheduled to air their season finales on May 22, 2008. To allow Lost to have a two-hour finale, ABC moved it one week later to May 29, 2008 and aired both parts of "There's No Place Like Home" back-to-back. Ultimately, this left thirty-four episodes to be split over seasons five and six, which will each have seventeen episodes. Another effect of the strike was that the backstories of the so-called "freighter folk", i.e. Faraday, Miles and Charlotte, had to be pushed back to season five. As such, the writers dropped hints to Charlotte's backstory in "There's No Place Like Home".

### Filming

"There's No Place Like Home: Part 2" was filmed in approximately three and a half weeks; filming concluded three weeks before the episode aired. Scenes set on the exterior of the freighter were shot on an actual freighter named Kahana. Several actors and crew members stayed aboard the freighter while filming "There's No Place Like Home", as well as other episodes of the fourth season. Director Jack Bender and several others became seasick after only spending a short time on board. The helicopter featured in several scenes never actually took off from or landed on the Kahana because the rotors were too large and would hit the boat if used. Instead, the rotors were added using digital effects and the helicopter was raised and lowered by a crane onto the deck of the freighter while it was docked. Filming took place during this and the footage was intercut with scenes of Michael dealing with the bomb; thus the helicopter is never seen landing on the freighter. Other scenes set on the helicopter were shot on a soundstage in front of a green screen, where actress Yunjin Kim lost her voice from screaming. Furthermore, the first prop bomb was deemed to be too small and the amount of C4 was doubled, even though the original amount of C4 depicted was sufficient to blow up the freighter. The set for the exterior of the Orchid station was constructed in the Manoa valley on the island of Oahu, near Paradise Park, a defunct tourist attraction, which served as the Dharma Initiative Hydra station in the first few episodes of the third season. The exterior elevator for the Orchid station did not actually move and a camera trick was used to simulate movement. The scene in which Sun confronts Widmore was filmed on location, in London, because actor Alan Dale (Widmore) was appearing as King Arthur in Spamalot there at the time. Dale was not made aware of the plot of the episode, saying that "the wording, the title and all the headings on the scripts were changed. Only [he] knew they were the Lost scripts, along with the director." Sonya Walger declared that despite being a guest star on the show since the second season's finale, the rescue scene was the first time she had met Matthew Fox and Evangeline Lilly, as most of her scenes were either only with Henry Ian Cusick or alone. Two alternate endings were shot for the episode in order to minimize the risk of the real ending being leaked. Both versions were shown on Good Morning America on May 30, 2008. In the first alternate ending, Sawyer is in the coffin and in the second, Desmond is in the coffin. Overall, it took four editors approximately three weeks to edit the second part of the finale, which under normal circumstances would take two months.

## Reception

### Ratings

"There's No Place Like Home: Part 1" was watched by 10.962 million American viewers, of which 6.391 million were ages 18 to 49, ranking nineteenth for the week in total viewers and eighth among viewers age 18 to 49. The episode was watched by 1.296 million Canadian viewers, ranking fifteenth for the week. It was also watched by 914,000 viewers in the United Kingdom and by 464,000 viewers in Australia, making it the thirtieth most watched program of the night, a feat that David Dale of The Sun-Herald thought proved that "there's hope for the world". "There's No Place Like Home: Part 2 " was watched by 12.303 million American viewers, of which 6.453 million were ages 18 to 49, making it the most watched show of the week overall and in the 18 to 49 demographic. It was the first Lost episode to lead the weekly ratings. The episode was watched by 1.448 million Canadian viewers, ranking second for the week. It was also watched by 1.166 million viewers in the United Kingdom and by 603,000 viewers in Australia.

### Critical response

Patrick Kevin Day of the Los Angeles Times praised Michael Giacchino's musical score, writing that "I'm reminded of the heights of emotion this series can evoke." Jarett Wieselman of the New York Post thought that the finale's split and two-week break was "not cool", but asked "how brilliant was Sun's smackdown on her bad daddy?". Alan Sepinwall of The Star-Ledger wrote that "when Lost is at its best ... it manages to balance revelations ... with great character moments. I don't know that I'd put this one in the pantheon (again, a lot of it was set-up for ... [Parts 2 & 3]), but it was definitely in the spirit of what I love about the show." Kristin dos Santos of E! praised the chemistry between Naveen Andrews and Andrea Gabriel, who play Sayid and Nadia, respectively. Chris Carabott of IGN gave Part 1 of the three-hour finale a 7.9. He commended the music and called it "a good opening to what should be an exciting season finale"; however, the lack of suspense in favor of set-up was cited as the reason for the modest rating. However, Carabott gave Parts 2 & 3 a perfect 10 review, tying with other perfect-10 episodes such as "The Constant" and "Through the Looking Glass". He stated that "Not a moment is wasted in this brilliantly paced and well-executed conclusion to what has been a fantastic season." Dan Compora of SyFy Portal called "Part 1" "an excellent setup episode [with] fast pace, important revelations, and nearly a full utilization of the cast". Compora decided that "certain characters work much better in very small doses ... a little bit of [Hurley] goes a long way [and] it was nice to see Jack featured without completely dominating an episode." Oscar Dahl of BuddyTV summed up Part 1 as "very good", but said that the opening flashforward in which the Oceanic Six are reunited with their families was anticlimactic and "although each flashforward scene had minor and major revelations, it felt patched together and a little sloppy, like Lindelof and Cuse had all this ground to cover in their quest to link all the action up to the final scene of season 3 ... That said, the flashforward scenes all played out exceedingly well." Daniel of TMZ welcomed the return of Richard (on the island) and gave the episode an "A", saying that it had "more than a few fantastic scenes. All the flashforward scenes tonight were right on the money as far as I was concerned." Jay Glatfelter of The Huffington Post "really liked this episode" and concluded that it "definitely showcased the new breath of life the fourth season gave to the show."

Matthew Fox received much praise for his performance in the scene in which his character Jack reacts to the revelation that Claire is his half-sister. Jarett Wieselman of the New York Post called this "brilliant acting", while Alan Sepinwall of The Star-Ledger said that "Fox played Jack's anguish beautifully" and called this scene a contender for "Fox's single best moment in the history of the show". Kristin dos Santos gave Fox "mad props" and Chris Carabott of IGN said that "Fox hasn't been given much of an opportunity to stretch his acting muscles this season but he gives a great performance [in this scene]."

Robert Bianco of USA Today said that "a great season of Lost ended with a suitably great finale, which ... ended with the ... whoa-inducing discovery that Locke was the man in the casket. Didn't see that coming—and I can't wait to see what this terrific TV series has coming next." Matthew Gilbert of The Boston Globe wrote that "the episode was dynamic and busy enough as it relied heavily on action-adventure... but the finale wasn't as mind-bending as [the third] season's farewell, during which we received the show's first flash-forward." Alan Sepinwall of The Star-Ledger enjoyed the triple-length "There's No Place Like Home", but ranked it in the middle of his list of the season's episodes from best to worst and decided that "'There's No Place Like Home" (both parts) played fair with the audience 100 percent, answered [many] questions ... and yet ... I feel ever so slightly disappointed by all of this." He also found the special effects "looked much shoddier than usual" and praised the score. Frazier Moore of the Associated Press thought that "it might be the most rewarding, deliciously challenging episode in the history of this mystical ABC serial." Dan Compora of SyFy Portal wrote that "Part 2" "was perhaps the most action-packed, meaningful episode of television I've watched all year. The pace was excellent, and the revelations were plentiful." Compora also wrote that "though the pace was considerably slower, the finale delivered in a big way ... it was [not a letdown, being] well written and well directed in its own right."

### Awards

The second part of "There's No Place Like Home" was nominated for Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing for a Drama Series for the 2008 Creative Arts Emmy Awards, however it lost to the pilot episode of Breaking Bad. The episode as a whole was nominated by the American Cinema Editors for Best Edited Miniseries or Film – Commercial Television at the American Cinema Editors Awards 2008, losing to 24: Redemption.

## Note

A. Prior to being broadcast, "There's No Place Like Home: Part 2" was known as "There's No Place Like Home: Parts 2 & 3" in ABC's press material. The home release of season four, as well as ABC's official Lost website, refers to it as "There's No Place Like Home: Part 2". Furthermore, the home release states that there are fourteen episodes in season four and "There's No Place Like Home" is counted as three episodes.

Television episodes directed by Jack Bender

Television episodes directed by Stephen Williams (director)

Television episodes written by Damon Lindelof


David Starkey

David Robert Starkey (born 3 January 1945) is an English historian, radio and television presenter, with views that he describes as conservative. The only child of Quaker parents, he attended Kendal Grammar School before reading history at Cambridge on a scholarship. There he specialised in Tudor history, writing a thesis on King Henry VIII's household. From Cambridge, he moved to the London School of Economics, where he was a lecturer in history until 1998. He has written several books on the Tudors.

Starkey first appeared on television in 1977. While a regular contributor to the BBC Radio 4 debate programme The Moral Maze, his acerbic tongue earned him the sobriquet of "rudest man in Britain"; his frequent appearances on Question Time have been received with criticism and applause. Starkey has presented several historical documentaries. In 2002, he signed a £2 million contract with Channel 4 for 25 hours of programming, and in 2011 was a contributor on the Channel 4 series Jamie's Dream School.

Starkey was widely censured for a comment he made during a podcast interview with Darren Grimes in June 2020 that was perceived as racist, for which he later apologised. Immediately afterwards, he resigned as an honorary fellow of his alma mater, Fitzwilliam College, had several honorary doctorates and fellowships revoked, book contracts and memberships of learned societies cancelled, and his Medlicott Medal withdrawn.

## Early years and education

Starkey was born on 3 January 1945 in Kendal, Westmorland. He is the only child of Robert Starkey and Elsie Lyon, Quakers who had married 10 years previously in Bolton, at a Friends meeting house. His father, the son of a cotton spinner, was a foreman in a washing-machine factory, while his mother followed in her father's footsteps and became a cotton weaver and later a cleaner. They were both born in Oldham and moved to Kendal in the 1930s during the Great Depression. He was raised in an austere and frugal environment of near-poverty, with his parents often unemployed for long periods of time; an environment which, he later stated, taught him "the value of money". Starkey is equivocal about his mother, describing her as both "wonderful", in that she helped develop his ambition, and "monstrous", intellectually frustrated and living through her son. "She was a wonderful but also very frightening parent. Finally, she was a Pygmalion. She wanted a creature, she wanted something she had made." Her dominance contrasted sharply to his father, who was "poetic, reflective, rather solitary...as a father he was weak." Their relationship was "distant", but improved after his mother's death in 1977.

Starkey was born with two club feet. One was fixed early, while the other had to be operated on several times. He also suffered from polio. He suffered a nervous breakdown at secondary school, aged 13, and was taken by his mother to a boarding house in Southport, where he spent several months recovering. Starkey blamed the episode on the unfamiliar experience of being in a "highly competitive environment". He ultimately excelled at Kendal Grammar School, winning debating prizes and appearing in school plays.

Although he showed an early inclination towards science, he chose instead to study history. A scholarship enabled his entry into Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, where he gained a first-class degree, a PhD and a fellowship.

Starkey was fascinated by King Henry VIII, and his doctoral thesis focused on the Tudor monarch's inner household. His supervisor was Professor Sir Geoffrey Elton, an expert on the Tudor period. Starkey claimed that with age his mentor became "tetchy" and "arrogant". In 1983, when Elton was awarded a knighthood, Starkey derided one of his essays, Cromwell Redivivus, and Elton responded by writing an "absolutely shocking" review of a collection of essays Starkey had edited. Starkey later expressed his remorse over the spat: "I regret that the thing happened at all."

## Career

Starkey was a fellow at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge from 1970 to 1972. Bored at Cambridge and attracted to London's gay scene, he secured a position as a lecturer in the Department of International History at the London School of Economics in 1972. He claimed to be an "excessively enthusiastic advocate of promiscuity", seeking to liberate himself from his mother, who strongly disapproved of his homosexuality. He ended his 30-year career as a university teacher in 1998, later citing boredom and irritation with the administrative demands modern academic life. Having already written and presented the 1984 Channel 4 documentary series This Land of England, he began to write and present several history documentaries for BBC television, beginning with the Indie Award winning Henry VIII (1998).

Starkey had already achieved notoriety as a panellist on the BBC Radio 4 debate programme The Moral Maze, debating moral issues of the day alongside fellow panellists Rabbi Hugo Gryn, Sir Roger Scruton and the journalist Janet Daley since 1992. He soon acquired a reputation for abrasiveness. He explained in 2007 that his personality possesses "a tendency towards showmanship... towards self-indulgence and explosion and repartee and occasional silliness and going over the top." The Daily Mail gave him the sobriquet of "the rudest man in Britain", to which Starkey was said to have told friends, "Don't worry darlings, it's worth at least £100,000 a year", claiming that his character was part of a "convenient image". He once attacked George Austin, the Archdeacon of York, over "his fatness, his smugness, and his pomposity", but after a nine-year stint on the programme he left, citing his boredom with being "Dr. Rude" and its move to an evening slot.

From 1995, he also spent three years at Talk Radio UK, presenting Starkey on Saturday, later Starkey on Sunday. An interview with Denis Healey proved to be one of his most embarrassing moments: "I mistakenly thought that he had become an amiable old buffer who would engage in amusing conversation, and he tore me limb from limb. I laugh about it now, but I didn't feel like laughing about it at the time."

His first television appearance was in 1977, on Granada Television's Behave Yourself with Russell Harty. He was a prosecution witness in the 1984 ITV programme The Trial of Richard III, whose jury acquitted the king of the murder of the Princes in the Tower on the grounds of insufficient evidence. His television documentaries on The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I were ratings successes. His breathless delivery of the script, with noticeable breaths and choppy cadence, is widely imitated.

In 2002, he signed a £2 million contract with Channel 4 to produce 25 hours of television, including Monarchy, a chronicle of the history of English kings and queens from Anglo-Saxon times onward. He presented the 2009 series Henry: Mind of a Tyrant, which Brian Viner, a reviewer for the Independent, called "highly fascinating", although A. A. Gill was less complimentary, calling it "Hello! history". In an interview about the series for the Radio Times, Starkey complained that too many historians had focused not on Henry, but on his wives. Referring to a "feminised history", he said: "so many of the writers who write about this are women and so much of their audience is a female audience." This prompted the historian Lucy Worsley to describe his comments as misogynistic. More recently, in 2011, he taught five history lessons in Channel 4's Jamie's Dream School, after which he criticised the state education system.

> The core of history is narrative and biography. And the way history has been presented in the curriculum for the last 25 years is very different. The importance of knowledge has been downgraded. Instead the argument has been that it's all about skills. Supposedly, what you are trying to do with children is inculcate them with the analytical skills of the historian. Now this seems to me to be the most goddamn awful way to approach any subject, and also the most dangerous, and one, of course, that panders to all sorts of easy assumptions – ‘oh we've got the internet, we don't need knowledge anymore because it's so easy to look things up'. Oh no it isn't. In order to think, you actually need the information in your mind.

In 1984, Starkey was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and in 1994 a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London. He was also made an Honorary Fellow by his Cambridge College, Fitzwilliam College in 2006. From 2007 to 2015 he was Honorary Visiting Professor of History at the University of Kent and subsequently Lecturer at Goldsmiths’ College (2017), Visiting Professor of History of Canterbury Christ Church University (2018–20) and Honorary Professor of History at the University of Buckingham (2019–20). He has worked as curator on several exhibitions, including an exhibit in 2003 on Elizabeth I, following which he had lunch with her namesake, Elizabeth II. Several years later he told a reporter that the monarch had no interest in her predecessors, other than those who followed her great-grandfather, Edward VII. "I don't think she's at all comfortable with anybody – I would hesitate to use the word intellectual – but it's useful. I think she's got elements a bit like Goebbels in her attitude to culture – you remember: 'every time I hear the word culture I reach for my revolver.' I think the queen reaches for her mask." His remarks were criticised by Penny Junor, a royal biographer, and Robert Lacey, a royal historian.

On 25 June 2012, Starkey gave his lecture 'Head of Our Morality: why the twentieth-century British monarchy matters' at The Marc Fitch Lectures.

## Views

### Politics

Starkey's political views have changed over the years from what he called "middle-of-the-road Labour left until the end of the 1970s" to a conservative outlook, that he attributed to economic failures of the Callaghan government. He is a supporter of one-nation conservatism and believes that Victorian Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli was a great symbol of this. He has written that Disraeli was "exotic, slippery and had a gift for language and phrase-making", drawing similarities with the rhetorical style of former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. He argues that the working classes need more explicit "nationalism" of the type demonstrated by Disraeli. He believes that Disraelianism could strengthen the Anglo-American "conservative" alliance between US and the UK. However, he suspects that despite Boris Johnson being a Conservative Prime Minister, he is actually "a liberal", so he doubts whether Johnson would ever take this view.

Starkey blames the Callaghan administration for "blow[ing] the nation's finances". During the 1980s he was an active Conservative Party member, and he was a Conservative candidate for Islington Borough Council in 1986 in Tollington ward, and in 1990 in Hillrise ward.

He bemoaned the Conservatives when they were in opposition, criticising Michael Howard in particular: "I knew Michael Howard was going to be a disaster as soon as he opposed top-up fees, either out of sentimentality or calculated expediency so that it might get him a bit of the student vote...Instead of backing Tony Blair, causing revolution in the Labour Party, the Conservatives have been whoring after strange gods, coming up with increasingly strange policies." He likened Gordon Brown to the fictional Kenneth Widmerpool, continuing, "It seems to me that with Brown there is a complete sense of humour and charm bypass." Of Ed Miliband, in 2015 he said "He is a man of high ambition and low talent – the worst possible combination. His whole language at the moment is soak the rich, hate the rich."

During the 2011 Conservative Party Conference he spoke at a fringe meeting, declaring Mayor Boris Johnson to be a "jester-despot" and the Prime Minister, David Cameron, as having "absolutely no strategy" for running the country. He urged the party to re-engage with the working class rather than the "Guardian-reading middle class". In 2015 he claimed that while Cameron and his Chancellor, George Osborne, had introduced some meaningful reforms to education and welfare policies, they had not made large enough cuts to the UK's budget deficit.

Starkey prefers radical changes to the UK's constitution in line with the federal system used by the United States, although in an interview with Iain Dale he expressed his support for the monarchy, the Queen and Prince Charles. In the run-up to the UK Alternative Vote referendum, he was a signatory on a letter to The Times, which urged people to vote against the proposals. Starkey thinks the modern UK House of Commons has become a weak political institution and that it should return to its core value of being in defiance of state authority, as it was in its origin. He believes the House too often gives way to the state, such as with the police being allowed to search the place without a warrant. This occurred in 2008 with the searching of the Westminster office of Conservative politician Damian Green after the custodians of the House, the Speaker and the Serjeant at Arms, allowed the police to search the place without a warrant.

Starkey was a supporter of the Tory Campaign for Homosexual Equality ("Torche"), and during one of many appearances on the BBC's Question Time he attacked Jeffrey Archer over his views on the age of homosexual consent. However, in 2012 he described himself as "torn" on the issue of same-sex marriage, describing marriage as "part of the baggage of heterosexual society."

In 2009, Mike Russell, then the Scottish Government Minister for Culture and External Affairs, called on him to apologise for his declaration on the programme that Scotland, Ireland and Wales are "feeble little countries". Starkey responded that it had been a joke regarding the lack of necessity for the English to outwardly celebrate their nationalism, approvingly quoting H. G. Wells's observation that "the English are the only nation without national dress". He described Alex Salmond, then Scottish First Minister, as a "Caledonian Hitler" who thinks that "the English, like the Jews, are everywhere". In August 2014, Starkey was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in September's referendum on that issue. In June 2015 in an interview for The Sunday Times Starkey compared the Scottish National Party (SNP) with the Nazi Party. He said:

> You have as a symbol the twisted cross: the saltire or the swastika. You have a passionate belief in self-sufficiency: known by the Nazis as autarky and the Scots as oil. And also you have the propensity of your elderly and middle-aged supporters to expose their knees.

SNP member of parliament Kirsten Oswald described Starkey's comments as "deeply offensive" to the Jewish community and SNP voters, and described Starkey as a "serial utterer of bile and bilge".

### European Union

Starkey is very critical of the European Union (EU). As a result, he supported the "Leave" vote in the 2016 EU referendum. This is because, as Starkey argues, the United Kingdom is best off as a self-governing nation, and the EU conflicts with this notion of self-government. Furthermore, he believes that the continuing support for the ideas of national pride and sovereignty, not xenophobia, in the UK were the biggest factors behind the UK's decision to leave the EU. He argues that the support for these ideas is what makes the UK different from the other EU member states which, as a result of the legacy of World War Two, tend to believe that nationalism is the cause of war and so joined the EU to prevent this.

As a historian, Starkey presents Brexit in a wider historical context to try to show its importance in British history. He makes comparisons between Brexit and Henry VIII's split from Rome and the Reformation that followed. He believes the Reformation sowed the seeds of Euroscepticism particularly in England and the nation's "semi-detached relationship with continental Europe". This had its origin with Henry VIII because "nobody before Henry would make any argument about England being much different from the rest of Europe. It was Henry who turns England into a defensible island, who literally fortifies the English coastline. It really is Henry that turns England into a genuine island." He claimed that Henry VIII could be considered the first Brexiteer. As Starkey explained in an interview in 2018, "The Roman Church was a super-national organisation with its own system of law, its own language, governance and own system of taxation. In other words, exactly like the European Union! And it's no accident at all that the EU was founded by the Treaty of Rome." He explains that Henry VIII fought on the grounds of England ruling itself, which is analogous to the Brexit debates.

Starkey argues that, "Remainers have somehow got the notion that we get our rights and liberties from Europe" but actually, we created our own values over our 800-year history. He believes that Brexit was a reaffirmation of those values, but was nevertheless a "...deeply irrational vote, not about what will make us better off, but rather, 'we'll be poorer, but we'll be free'."

### Religion

Starkey is an atheist. He has described the Catholic Church as being "riddled with corruption". However, he has often defended the right for Christians to hold their beliefs, arguing that they should have the right to their views and penalising them for it is "intolerant, oppressive and tyrannical".

### Magna Carta

Starkey believes the royal charter of rights Magna Carta is of great importance. He has often spoken about it and has written about it most notably in his book Magna Carta: The True Story Behind the Charter (2015). He also presented a television documentary on the subject David Starkey's Magna Carta, in which he argued that Magna Carta is a steadying force for constitutions. He believes that Magna Carta is essential in keeping peace and constraints on the state and the public and says that it is this rather shaky but very important 800 year old document that has led to a "constitutional edifice" developing in the UK.

Starkey often speaks about the political implications of Magna Carta in present-day politics. He believes the modern UK state appears to be fragmenting and would be helped by the core principles of the charter with a new charter of liberties or a new William Marshal figure. In a review of Starkey's book on Magna Carta, medieval historian James Masschaele said that Starkey viewed the barons as republican figures.

### England riots and black culture

In August 2011, Starkey attracted criticism for some comments made on the BBC's Newsnight programme where he was a panel member together with Owen Jones and Dreda Say Mitchell. The programme discussed the 2011 England riots. Starkey condemned "this language which is wholly false, which is this Jamaican patois that's been intruded in England, and this is why so many of us have this sense of literally a foreign country", that listening to the voice of the black MP for Tottenham where the riots occurred "you would think he was white" and that "The whites have become black. A particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic, gangster culture."

The comments were criticised by MPs and some media presenters and described as a "career ending moment". He was criticised by fellow panellist Dreda Say Mitchell for focusing on "black culture", since "Black communities are not homogenous. So there are black cultures. Lots of different black cultures." The then-leader of the Labour Party, Ed Miliband, spoke about Starkey's remarks, saying that "they are racist comments, frankly". The author Toby Young, blogging in the Telegraph, defended Starkey by saying that Starkey had not been talking about black culture in general. The Spectator columnist Rod Liddle argued in support of the remarks. Jones described the comments as "one of the ugliest episodes of the backlash". Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Starkey argued his views had been distorted, he referred only to a "particular sort" of "black culture", and that the "black educationalists" Tony Sewell and Katharine Birbalsingh supported the substance of his Newsnight comments.

The BBC received more than 700 complaints (and broadcast regulator Ofcom a further 103) about the comments. A petition to demand a public apology from the BBC attracted more than 3,600 signatures. Ofcom deemed the comments to have been part of a "serious and measured discussion" and took no action, and Starkey described the reaction as "hysteria about race".

In the aftermath of the Newsnight broadcast, 102 university historians wrote an open letter that demanded Starkey no longer be described as a "historian" on anything but his specialist subject, the Tudors. The letter criticised "[h]is crass generalisations about black culture and white culture as oppositional, monolithic entities demonstrate a failure to grasp the subtleties of race and class that would disgrace a first-year history undergraduate." The letter also criticised his supposed "lack of professionalism" and "some of the worst practices of an academic" in shouting down, belittling, and mocking, opposing views, rather than meeting them with evidence.

### Other comments on race and British culture

In a June 2012 debate Starkey was criticised for stating that the perpetrators of the Rochdale child sex abuse ring had values "entrenched in the foothills of the Punjab or wherever it is" and were "acting within their cultural norm". He was accused by his fellow panelist, writer Laurie Penny, of "playing xenophobia and national prejudice for laughs". In 2013, he criticised the inclusion of the British-Jamaican nurse Mary Seacole in British school history curriculums, which he argued unduly promoted her and her work.

In January 2015, Starkey, on a television programme, called political journalist Mehdi Hasan "Ahmed" and said that "nothing important" had been written in Arabic for 500 years. He also appeared to imply that a female victim of a child sexual abuse grooming gang was at fault for the abuse she had experienced. He received a large number of criticism on Twitter for these comments.

In November 2015, the University of Cambridge dropped a fundraising video featuring Starkey after a backlash from staff and students. A letter signed by hundreds of students and staff criticised Starkey's involvement in the video due to him "repeatedly making racist statements".

In May 2023, speaking to GB News, Starkey expressed his belief that prime minister Rishi Sunak was "not fully grounded in" British culture. When the host, Andrew Pierce, asked him to clarify Starkey confirmed that he attributed this to Sunak's Hindu religion. Sunak was born in Southampton, Hampshire. Starkey later denied his comments were racist, saying he was referring to the prime minister being a “typical international liberal” with no interest in British “values”.

### Black Lives Matter and slavery

#### 2020 controversial comments

On 30 June 2020, in a podcast interview with Darren Grimes, Starkey spoke about the Black Lives Matter movement. Starkey suggested that people should not "go on about" slavery because it had been abolished in 1833 and that "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". He had made the same point in a column eight days earlier except without the use of the word "damn". Starkey's comments were rebuffed by former Chancellor Sajid Javid, who said they were racist and that they serve as "a reminder of the appalling views that still exist", and they were widely described as racist in the media. Historian David Olusoga, praised by Starkey in the same broadcast, described the comments as "truly disgusting. And by the same ridiculous, twisted logic the Holocaust would not be counted as a genocide".

As a result, the Mary Rose Trust accepted his resignation from the board of trustees and the Historical Association announced on Twitter that it would withdraw the Medlicott Medal it had awarded him 20 years previously. Fitzwilliam College of Cambridge University distanced themselves from his comments and later accepted his resignation as an honorary fellow on 3 July 2020. Canterbury Christ Church University, where Starkey had been a visiting professor, removed him from that role in response to his "completely unacceptable" remarks. The magazine History Today also removed him from their editorial board. Lancaster University revoked Starkey's honorary degree after an investigation found that his comments were "racist and contradictory to the values of the University". The University of Kent launched a formal review of his honorary graduate status. HarperCollins terminated its book deal with Starkey and his previous publisher, Hodder & Stoughton, has also said that they "will not be publishing any further books by him". Vintage Books announced it would be reviewing the status of books by Starkey in their back catalogue. Also on 3 July 2020, at a meeting of the Royal Historical Society, the society's council resolved that Starkey should be asked to resign his fellowship with immediate effect. On 6 July 2020, Starkey resigned his fellowship of the Society of Antiquaries of London at the request of its council.

On 25 September 2020, the Metropolitan Police opened an investigation into the interview over an allegation of a public order offence. In October, Starkey was investigated by the police for "stirring up racial hatred" through the comments he made in the podcast with Darren Grimes. In regard to the allegations, Starkey said that he did not "intend to stir up racial hatred and there was nothing about the circumstances of the broadcast which made it likely to do so" and also that the investigation by the police was "neither proportionate nor in the best interests of preserving proper freedom of expression".

On 14 October the police dropped their investigation saying that "it is no longer proportionate that this investigation continues". This followed a free speech backlash from several major UK politicians such as then Home Secretary Priti Patel who said the law should protect freedom of speech as a "general principle" which should not be violated. Following the news of the ending of the investigation, Starkey said: "The investigation should never of course have begun. From the beginning it was misconceived, oppressive and designed to misuse the criminal law to curtail the proper freedom of expression and debate ... freedom is our birth right; and it is more important than ever at this critical juncture in our nation's history."

Grimes and Starkey subsequently launched a formal complaint against the Metropolitan Police accusing them of being biased against them and acting in "deference" to the Black Lives Matter movement.

#### 2023 controversial comments

In May 2023 at the National Conservatism Conference, organised by the Edmund Burke Foundation, Starkey claimed that “white culture” is under threat from the Black Lives Matter movement and proponents of critical race theory who are “not what they pretend to be” and who he claimed are attempting to destroy “the entire legitimacy of the Western cultural tradition.” He said that said conservatives had to defend the “uniqueness of the Anglo-American tradition” against “barbarians”.

He disputed the “idea that they are there to defend black lives” as “preposterous,” claiming that “they only care about the symbolic destruction of white culture” that they see as “fundamentally morally defective,” comparing it to “exactly what was done to German culture because of Nazism and the Holocaust.”

Starkey claimed that “the determination is to replace the Holocaust with slavery” and “this is why Jews are under such attack from the left,” because “there is jealousy of the moral primacy of the Holocaust and a determination to replace it with slavery.”

## Personal life

Starkey lived for many years with his partner, James Brown, a publisher and book designer, until the latter's death in 2015. The couple had three homes: a house in Highbury, a manor house in Kent, and another in Chestertown, Maryland, US. Starkey previously lived at John Spencer Square in Canonbury, Islington.

## Honours

- Starkey was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2007 Birthday Honours for services to history.

### Commonwealth honours

Commonwealth honours

### Scholastic

University degrees

Chancellor, visitor, governor, rector and fellowships

Honorary degrees

### Memberships and fellowships

Learned societies

Museums and trusts

## Awards

## Work

### Books

- (published in North America as Elizabeth: The struggle for the throne)
- (A compilation of The Monarchy of England: The Beginnings, Monarchy: From the Middle Ages to Modernity and some new material)

### Television

- Henry VIII (1998, revised 2001)
- Elizabeth (2000)
- The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2001)
- Edward and Mary: The Unknown Tudors (2002)
- David Starkey: Reinventing the Royals (2002)
- Monarchy by David Starkey (2004–2007)
- Henry VIII: The Mind of a Tyrant (2009)
- Kate and William: Romance and the Royals (2011)
- Jamie's Dream School (2011)
- The Churchills (2012)
- David Starkey's Music and Monarchy (2013)
- Britain's Tudor Treasure: A Night at Hampton Court, co-presented with Lucy Worsley (2015)
- David Starkey's Magna Carta (2015)
- Reformation: Europe's Holy War (2017)

### Applications

- Kings and Queens by David Starkey for iPhone and iPad (2011)

English constitutional historian (born 1945)

Academics of the London School of Economics

Alumni of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge

Commanders of the Order of the British Empire