Professor David Starkey has said the best historians are older as you need to have loved and lost to understand the past.

Speaking candidly about the death of his long-term partner for the first time, Prof Starkey told The Sunday Telegraph his loss has informed his understanding of historical figures.

His new project is an exhibition on King Henry VIII as part of the renovations at Hever Castle in Kent, the former home of Anne Boleyn.

“I think this exhibition shows what I have learned personally and professionally,” Prof Starkey, 73, said.

Three years ago, Prof Starkey’s long term partner, James Brown died at the couple’s 18th Century manor house in Kent.

Prof Starkey met Brown, a publisher and book designer, when he was lecturing at London School of Economics in the 1990s and the couple lived together for 21 years until Brown’s sudden death.

“What I have done is used my own experience of mourning and of joy,” he said. “You take the dry facts of history and with memories in your own life, you realise how you should understand them.”