Enrico VIII e le sei mogli

In a statement released on Monday, Starkey said he had "paid a heavy price for one offensive word with the loss of every distinction and honour acquired in a long career".

Speaking about his use of the phrase "so many damn blacks", he said: "It was intended to emphasise, in hindsight with awful clumsiness, the numbers who survived the horrors of the slave trade. Instead, it came across as a term of racial abuse.

"This, in the present atmosphere, where passions are high and feelings raw, was deplorably inflammatory. It was a bad mistake."

He added: "I am very sorry for it and I apologise unreservedly for the offence it caused.

"Moreover, this misunderstanding of my words in no way reflects my views or practice on race.

"I have lived and worked happily and without conflict in multicultural London for almost 50 years and I spent much of the podcast discussing bi-culturalism as a key to the success of Britain's multicultural society."

Henry VIII's legendary marital troubles paved the way for copycat divorces, new evidence has suggested.

Records from the 16th Century have been largely lost.

But experts from Bangor University and the University of Exeter have unearthed evidence of parallels between events at the royal court and the love-life of a member of the Welsh gentry.

Edward Griffith of Gwynedd flip-flopped between two wives in a similar way to and at the same time as the monarch.
Teenager Edward married Jane of Cochwillan who subsequently died aged 13. He then married her sister Agnes in about 1527 but the following year she returned to live with her father.

Edward later married Jane Puleston in about 1529, but he soon began living with Agnes again. He then returned to Jane and they had three daughters - Jane, Elin and Katherine.

The chronology of these events closely resembles the complicated ending of Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon.

[...] Prof Rebecca Probert, an expert in marriage law from the University of Exeter, said: "We have compared the evidence we have about Edward's life and it's very striking that events in his life echo that of events in the royal marriage.

"Viewed in isolation, Edward appears at best indecisive and at worst a complete cad. But if you put his actions in the context of the actions of the king, it seems he felt bound by the arguments put forward by his ruler."