Starkey received his doctorate from Oxford University; the subject of his dissertation was the works of the Egyptian writer Tawfiq Hakim.
[1] He is emeritus professor of the Arabic department at the University of Durham and was also co-director of the Centre for Advanced Study of the Arab World (CASAW), a collaborative project by the Universities of Edinburgh, Durham and Manchester.
He is a specialist on the Sixties Generation of Egyptian writers, in particular Sonallah Ibrahim and Edwar al-Kharrat.
Starkey has translated several contemporary Arabic novels, including works by Edwar al-Kharrat and Mansoura Ez-Eldin.
His translations have been published in Banipal magazine and he has also served on the judging panel of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction.