What's it like to live in a royal palace?

Tour guide to chief curator

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2:05Schedule your tour today. Did Lucy Worsley have the best job in history? As she writes in her latest book, Lucy's time as chief curator at historic royal palaces was an incredibly varied one. Speaking to Charlotte Vosper for this episode of the History Extra podcast, Lucy reflects on her career so far and reveals how it has changed her perspective on some of your favourite monarchs from the past.

2:38Hi, Lucy. Thanks so much for coming on to the podcast. It's lovely to have you here. It's totally my pleasure. Thank you for having me. You're very welcome. Now, today we're going to be talking about your remarkably varied career, your experience working in royal palaces, and your role in changing the way that we think about monarchs in the past. But before we dive into all of that, I'd like to start by asking, what was your first major role in the public history and heritage sector? I was a tour guide. Wow. Okay. And actually, there's such a parallel with what I do today, which is talking to people about history.

3:13And like any tour guide, I had to get quite good at seeing if people were looking bored, whether they were looking interested. And I definitely didn't step onto the stage as a fully fledged historian, by any means. And I do think that my background really helped me as a curator, because a lot of people who have traditionally been curators are really expert in the history side of things. But I was out there. I was dealing with customers. I was providing opportunities for people to learn, I suppose. And that's something I've always really enjoyed doing.

3:45So you're working on the front line, basically. Yes, yes. I finished my history degree, and I wrote to all the historic houses that were in the area. And one of them said, yeah, come along. And so I just got stuck in, and I ended up doing things like organising their crazy historical reenactments that they had. Oh, brilliant. An involvement in reenactment. That is fun. It was. So from there, being a tour guide, how did you progress then to being chief curator of historic rural palaces? Well, then I had to get a proper job.

4:13I worked for the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, which is a small and very distinguished conservation charity. It was set up by William Morris. And there I was in charge of the windmills and watermills section. Wow. Yes, it exists. I was the organiser of something called National Windmills Day. And after that, I sort of progressed, and I got jobs at English Heritage and Glasgow Museums, and I did my PhD. I did it as a mature student a bit later on, which I think is a kind of a superpower,

4:43because once you're grown up, you realise you can't mess around if you get the opportunity to learn like that. So I zipped through my PhD, and then I moved from Glasgow Museums to Historic Royal Palaces in 2003. And that is where your new book actually begins, isn't it? As you're walking into your apartment.

Living at Hampton Court

5:00Now, as chief curator at Historic Royal Palaces, you got to actually live on site at Hampton Court, which is extremely cool. What was it like to be there and be able to wander around out of hours after dark? Well, at first, when I was 29 and very, very fresh into my big, scary new job, it was terrifying. It was really intimidating, because a palace is literally designed to freak you out and impress and overwhelm you with the power of the monarchy.

5:33So palaces are big and they're complicated, and they're hard to find your way around. But over time, I got more and more comfortable. I guess I wanted to be the one who was answering the questions rather than asking them. And it took me a long time to get to that position. But by the end of 20 years, I could, you know, find my way through the labyrinth with confidence. And there is such a special thing about walking in the footsteps of those who've gone before you. It's a psychological effect, but it's a really powerful one.

6:04And the writer Isaac Asimov put it very well, I think. He said that when you go to a place where the great events of history happened, like Hampton Court Palace, only time and not space separates you from the people of the past. So to walk in the footsteps of Anne Boleyn, it's a very special feeling. Yeah, that is incredible. I bet that must have felt amazing to call your home as well, that you actually got to live there and be there permanently. It's amazing. So are there any kind of areas of the palace that you particularly fell in love with?

6:37Where were you staying on site? At first, I lived in a tiny little flat that was deep in the Tudor kitchens, which are this whole kind of sector at the palace at Hampton Court. It's not a sort of Downton Abbey, upstairs, downstairs type situation. You've got the King's Rooms over on one side, and then over on the other side, you've got all the service quarters. And that was so that in the early days of the palace, the kitchens could catch fire and burn down and the Great Hall would be fine. So they go on for miles and miles and miles, which is why the Georgians abandoned them

7:09and built some nice, neat, convenient German-style kitchens off Tennis Court Lane. And if anyone listening to this wants to live at Hampton Court Palace, they can, because the Georgian kitchens there are a holiday flat, which is rented out by the Landmark Trust. And the garden of that flat was immediately below my office window. And on sunny days, I'd look out and I'd see all these people having a lovely holiday in the garden of the kitchens, and I'd grind my teeth in jealousy.

7:40I'm working away here. I'm looking at you on holiday down there. And then so when you first moved in, which part of the complex were you in? That was when I was in the kitchens. And I quite soon moved. I was only there because the boiler was being refurbished in the flat where I ended up, which was in the barrack block, which is a long 17th century soldier's barracks, which is on the left-hand side as you go in. Wow. It sounds incredible to be there on site. It is incredible. The one thing I would say, though, is there's no privacy. It's like living in a really small village.

8:11The palace community is really tight. There's security. Everybody knows exactly what time you come home at night. I bet it is in its own way. It's kind of own little world that you operate in. Yeah. Behind those gates. Are there any kind of spots that you identified as your favourite sort of behind-the-scenes spots that you can give us an insight into? One of my favourite things to see at Hampton Court is the pornographic graffiti. Oh, it's a messy pencil sketch that's been done on a plaster wall of one of the back staircases

8:49of the palace. So this is where somebody like a really bored page in the 17th century would have been hanging and waiting for the bell to ring for, you know, somebody upstairs would ring and say, right, we want some hot chocolate, and he'd have to jump to it. And I can see that he must have, you know, thought, oh, my goodness, I want to die. I will draw a naked lady on the wall of the palace just here. But I suspect that he hadn't actually seen a naked lady at this point in his life because she's really anatomically inaccurate. And the other thing that's quite cool is that he's done her, I'm assuming it's a he, he's

9:21done her feet really nicely. She's actually wearing shoes, late 17th century shoes and stockings, and then she's naked above that. So perhaps he was a foot fetishist. A foot fetish going on. A 17th century page with a foot fetish. Yes, I love that. That's brilliant.

Henry VIII and the six wives

9:40Now, Hampton Court is largely associated with Henry VIII, who was basically given the palace by Cardinal Wolsey as he fell from power to try and appease the king. Now, Henry is a figure that many of our listeners will be familiar with. But did Hampton Court change your perspective on Henry? Did you see a different side to him through your work there? What has changed my perspective on Henry, I think, is the passage of time and just about Cardinal Wolsey giving the palace to Henry VIII. I think that Cardinal Wolsey always wanted to give the palace to Henry VIII.

10:12He would write letters from Your Majesty's palace at Hampton Court. Like, it was a privilege to him to have the king come to stay. So he probably was quite glad when Henry VIII said, I really like your palace. Thank you. Because that would, you know, boost Wolsey up a bit. But I do remember when I started working there 20 years ago, Henry VIII was treated very respectfully. He was like the hero of the story. And people talked about his role in founding the English Navy and putting England onto the European stage as the Renaissance began to take root in England.

10:43And people began to take it more seriously as a nation that wasn't just about bad weather and civil war, as previously it had been fought off by the Germans and the French. People are really familiar with the psychodrama of Henry and the wives. But over time, people have begun to think, hang on, was he really so great? He chopped their heads off? He behaved so badly? He did all these really terrible things on the basic human level. And now I've seen his reputation fall and the reputation very much of the six queens rise.

11:19There's been like this parallel, his falling, their rising. And you can see that in the different kinds of sort of public history products that I've been involved in over the last 20 years. About halfway through my time, I got to work on a BBC series that was called Six Wives with Lucy Worsley. And there was this huge row about the title because the BBC said, well, I don't think anyone's going to watch it if Henry VIII isn't in the title. That's what it was like back then.

11:50But two of the people who did watch it were students at Cambridge University at the time. And they thought this story would make a really great musical. And they wrote a musical that's now taken the world and it's just called Six. So I guess over 20 years, I've seen Henry VIII to the Six Wives and then just to Six. It's a sort of progression, a royal progress, if you like. It is a royal progress. But funny, isn't it, that now we have a theatrical show that's just called Six and everyone knows

12:22what you're talking about versus when you're making a documentary and you had to fight to have the six queens in the title. That's because society has changed. There's been Me Too, there's been all kinds of changes. And to be fair, the latest exhibition at Hampton Court isn't even about the Six anymore. It's called The Tudor World. And it's about the context. And the feeling is, come on, we've all heard about these kings and queens. What about the rest of the world that was, you know, unfolding around them? Yeah, what about everybody else? Yes, exactly. Yeah, well, sounds great. And while we might associate Hampton Court with Henry and the queens,

12:53he is far from the only monarch to have visited and adapted the building. What does the structure of the building itself tell us about the other monarchs and consorts who came to Hampton Court? What evidence can we find of them there? Well, at Hampton Court, you really get two palaces for one. You get the Tudor Palace, that's the first thing you see. And then behind that, you get England's equivalent of Versailles, the Stuart Royal Palace that was built for William and Mary. And that is actually a really large geographical area of the palace.

13:28And it's quite hard to get your head around if you go to those rooms as a visitor, because it was such an alien way of living. Because both the king and the queen each had a huge number of different rooms. Their rooms are laid out into a chain. And between each room, there would have been a door with guards at it. And only the most important people would have got through this whole chain. It was like a filter. You would be weeded out depending on your social status, how well dressed you were, that sort of thing. And only the very last room in the chain was where you might actually find

14:02William III sitting in his study. But if you were an actual really important person, like a mistress or a courier or a spy or somebody he really wanted to see, you wouldn't go through this whole elaborate front way in. You'd use the back stairs, where you might find his chamber pot going down and his most important visitors going up. So you would have had a little back entrance if you were really close to the king. And it's so hard to get close to these royal people from history, because actually, this apartment I've just described is on the first floor of the palace.

14:34And on the ground floor of the palace below that, he had another whole secret apartment, which is where he maybe actually lived something like his real life. And down there was his bedroom that had locks on the insides of all the doors. So that's where you can imagine him finally having a bit of privacy. And I suppose there's probably, this could be presuming, are there many records of what that would have looked like? Do we know what those apartments would have been like? It's really hard to find evidence because not many people got to see them.

15:05But it's been worked out that that was his bedroom, from the fact that the locks were on the inside of the doors. And because an inventory describes there being scenes of darkness and night time hung on the walls there. So that would make sense, wouldn't it? Yeah, it would.

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The princes in the tower

17:15So as Chief Curator then, you've also done lots of work at the Tower of London. When we talk about the Tower though, most people will instantly think of the princes in the Tower. While I've got you here, I've got to ask, what do you think happened to them? I think that a lot of people have been caught up with a kind of prince mania that defies all logic and reason. And I think it is highly likely, for the record, with apologies to all members of the Richard III Society who might be listening to this,

17:46I think it's highly likely that Richard III did do them in. But I'm really fascinated by the way people talk about this as if it were a murder mystery. I'm also quite interested in detective fiction and its history. And I'm really fascinated by the way a lot of the conventions of detective fiction are superimposed by us onto what was basically regime change in the 15th century. And there's, to my mind, an outsized influence played in all of this by an actual detective story called

18:23The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tay. And I'm sure a lot of people will know the story. In it, there's a policeman and he's in hospital and he's a bit bored and he thinks, what I will do is reinvestigate the cold case of Richard III. And he starts off by looking at a portrait of Richard III and he thinks, well, he doesn't have the face of a killer. Now, that is not exactly a legitimate means of historical inquiry. But from that has flowed so many ideas about suspects and people have treated it as a locked room mystery.

18:58And it's just a sort of very modern way of looking at the issue, I would say. I can see why it's so addictive because there is this idea that it is a cold case that can be solved. But there's no way you could ever retry a case from the 15th century according to the modern evidential standards of court. So, OK, then thinking a little bit more about this interpretation of the history, the idea that Richard may well have killed the prince in the Tower. Is that the interpretation that visitors see when they come to the Tower of London today?

19:28Well, at one point in my time, we thought we would solve this problem by throwing the question back to visitors. And we laid out some information about the evidence and then there were voting buttons. You could vote guilty or innocent. And I have to say, everybody pressed the guilty button. Perhaps not surprising in some sense. But quite a good idea, though, to deal with that slightly tricky history by throwing the onus back. It was outsourcing the problem. I have to say, it's not there anymore. I think that it was kind of designed to push people down one particular funnel that perhaps wasn't fair.

20:00OK. So now... Now you make up your own mind. Make up your own mind. Absolutely.

Mad king George at Kew

20:05Now, another of the palaces which you've worked at, which has also been connected to constitutional crisis, as most of them have, is Kew Palace, which is where the quote-unquote mad King George III lived while suffering mental illness. How did you go about telling that difficult story at Kew? I'm fascinated to hear you put the question in that way, because 20 years ago, I don't think anyone would have said, yes, George III was experiencing mental illness. There was a kind of a reluctance, a nervousness, a sort of a skating around the issue.

20:39And Kew Palace, when I started work, was closed to visitors. It was reopened during the early days of my time there. And we had to decide how we were going to present this issue of his illness, because Kew Palace was where he was sent to recuperate from it. And at that time, the sort of favoured explanation was that he had porphyria, which is a metabolic disorder. Famously, your wee turns blue. And you have all kinds of physical manifestations that tied in with the very varied symptoms that there's evidence that he experienced.

21:14And there were two historians who'd come up with this in the 20th century, McAlpine and Hunter. And they were very strong royalists. They were both really into the royal family. And I suspect that their putting forward this theory was slightly coloured by them thinking, we don't want there to be mental illness in the royal family. We're talking about very 20th century attitudes here. I feel, perhaps I'm doing them a disservice, that they were more comfortable with that as an explanation.

21:45And over time, I just became totally convinced by a different explanation, which is that George III was experiencing what today we call bipolar disorder. And in particular, a group of researchers at St. George's Hospital in Tooting, London, had analysed all of his written correspondence. Now, George III was a man who liked to write. He produced pages and pages of letters and notes. And my goodness, he really was happy with a pen in his hand.

22:16And they put all of that into a piece of software that analysed things like sentence length and the complexity of the language and the repetitive nature of the words that he was using. And they found this pattern that's really observable in the verbal communication of people with bipolar disorder, which is that when they're in periods of mania, they are just full of words. And then when they come down, when they are not in mania anymore, their language reverts to a more sort of normal way of communicating.

22:48And I thought, that's really convinced me. Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it, to try and look back at our historical evidence that we have and retrospectively understand what someone might have been experiencing. That's always a tricky subject, but it does seem rather convincing, doesn't it? And the reason I think it matters is because if a king can have bipolar disorder, anyone can have bipolar disorder. Yeah, it's an important part of the interpretation to bring to the fore, definitely.

Queen Victoria's parenting

23:14And now, while I realise we are skipping through royal palaces quite quickly, another one of the residences that came under your jurisdiction as chief curator was Kensington Palace, which is where Queen Victoria was born. Now, like a lot of the monarchs we've discussed so far, our listeners will be likely very familiar with her. But after your work at Kensington, are there any misconceptions around Queen Victoria which you would like to challenge? What are the things that I think people believe that they know about Queen Victoria?

23:44is that she was a bad mother. And we really addressed this in an exhibition we did in 2019, which was the bicentenary of her birth. And one of the things that we borrowed for this exhibition was something called the baby bathing bib. Now, a baby bathing bib is a kind of apron that you could stuff a towel down a pocket inside it. And if your baby was wet after its bath, you could bounce it around on your knee and it could dry itself. And this was a way into, why is she a bad mother?

24:15Why do people think this? And the reason that people think it is partly because she said some very catchy and very negative things about children. She had a real way with her pen, did Queen Victoria. And she once said, An ugly baby is a very nasty object. And even the prettiest is frightful when undressed, which is funny and it's memorable. And, you know, it's not the sort of thing you often hear a woman say. It's not. No. But the trouble is that's so quotable

24:46that I think people have overlooked other evidence, like the fact that if you look at her sketchbooks, she was endlessly drawing her children. You know, today people take pictures of their kids. She did that through her pencil. And when Victoria died, the first printed edition of her written work was put together by two gentlemen, Benson and Esha. They were the editors of her first published correspondence. And they had to select, obviously,

25:19some of the letters to publish, which would become the most accessible letters, the ones that the world would really get to know her through. And the ones they tended to choose were the ones to other heads of state, to government ministers, and not to the other half of her correspondence, which was to women. And it was in the letters to other women that she tended to talk at length about the kids. So none of that stuff ended up in the most accessible form of her words. And thus the myth developed. And am I right in thinking as well that a lot of her diaries have been lost

25:50or were actually destroyed after she died? Well, yes. Here's another of these juicy historical mysteries people like to speculate about. It is true that Queen Victoria's youngest daughter, Princess Beatrice, transcribed a lot of her mother's journals. And as she was doing this, she destroyed the originals. So people have thought, what was she covering up? Was she covering up a secret marriage with John Brown? That kind of thing. I think that poor Princess Beatrice

26:21has got a bit of a bad rap for this because one thing people don't appreciate is just how bad Queen Victoria's handwriting was. I mean, it's really impenetrable. And I think one of the things Beatrice was doing was trying to increase access to her mother's words by writing them out more legibly. So I think she was well-intentioned. The trouble was there was such a lot of stuff to get through, millions of words, that Princess Beatrice got bored and she missed stuff out.

26:53And also, as somebody of her class and time, she missed stuff out that to her was boring. But to us, this is the stuff we really want to know. Things like Queen Victoria's most intimate servants, her wardrobe women, for example, her dressers, who were actually the people who spent real intimate time with her. None of Victoria's children would ever have seen their mother in bed, for example. So in some ways, the people closest to her were her close servants.

27:23But Princess Beatrice thought, no one's interested in that, I'll skip them. And botheration, Beatrice, we would really have liked to have known more about them. Yes, historians would have liked that to remain in the records, I am sure. Now, in your book, you write about many more monarchs and many more misconceptions, actually, which sadly we don't have time to cover today. But actually, for our listeners, if you would like to know more about our changing understanding of royalty and the work Lucy has done towards changing those perspectives, you should check out the feature which she wrote for History Extra. I will pop a link to it

27:53in the description of this episode, so feel free to have a read. But looking back across your time as Chief Curator, what do you understand or know about British royal history now that you didn't when you first walked into your Hampton Court apartments as a young curator? I thought 20 years ago that they'd get to a point where history was finished, that I knew everything, and that, you know, we decided how things played out. What has really struck me more than anything else is how fluid history is.

28:25Every single generation is going to need its own new version. And I've seen that sort of playing out within my lifetime. And that's quite humbling, really. I mean, I've had my say now and other people will control the future. And that's fine with me. That's quite a nice idea, though, isn't it? To think about those changing perspectives over time that history isn't fixed. Well, one of the best things that ever happens to me, Charlotte, is that someone will write in and they'll say, I read one of your books or watched a programme that you worked on

28:56or visited an exhibition that you were involved with. And I got into the subject of history. And I read some books about it. And then I did an evening class. And then I did a history degree at the Open University. And now I want your job. But that is my goal, actually, to build in my own obsolescence. Oh, really? OK. To kind of encourage that legacy a little bit. That's what makes me happy. I love that. That's brilliant. OK, so then thinking a little bit more about your opinions on royal history and the perspectives you've gained through your work,

29:27it's time for a segment of quickfire questions.

Royal hot takes

29:29OK.

Royal hot takes

29:30You spent 20 years working royal palaces. So naturally, we need your royal hot takes. OK, so I'm going to ask you a question and I want you to answer without thinking about it too much. So number one, who do you think was the most scandalous British royal? I'm spoilt for choice amongst the Hanoverians. George I, George II, George IV, loads of scandal there. And when people talk about scandal in the royal family today, I'm like, you ain't seen nothing compared with the 18th and early 19th century. George IV, I would say, most scandalous. The one who the late Queen Mother

30:01used to call Old Naughty. Do you want to expand on it a tiny bit why he was called that? Oh, the overeating, the overdrinking, the mistresses. And here's an unpopular opinion. In some ways, I feel a bit sorry for George IV because I could see really self-destructive behaviour in his life that was brought about partly because he just didn't have the right personality to be king. As his wife said, he would have made a great hairdresser. Hairdressing royal. He had a fantastic sense of style. He just was no good at politics.

30:32OK, so the next one, why do we care so much about the Tudors? I think we care so much about the Tudors because of the psychodrama of the personal life of Henry VIII. And that has also become so familiar. And historians of other periods are like, no, not the Tudors. But what the Tudors do have, right, is the power to get people over the threshold and into the world of the past. Henry VIII, he's like the marijuana of history. So there's a place for him because

31:03he hooks people in and then they can go off into different parts of the wood. I like that. Henry VIII is the gateway drug. He is. Heard that here first. I like that. OK, next one. What is the most interesting thing you've discovered during your time as chief curator? OK, it's in the attic at Hampton Court and it's a broken brown old pot and it looks absolutely like nothing of interest at all. Until you learn that it is 500 years old and it's what the Tudors called a piss pot and 500 years ago this particular

31:33piss pot got broken and the pieces got tossed out into the garden at Hampton Court where they were excavated and I remember the excitement there was in the curator's office when they were sent off to the lab to be analysed and the report came back and it told us that our 500 year old piss pot still contained traces of genuine Tudor piss. That is amazing. It's there. Yeah, you can't see it. You can't smell it but it's there. We know the Tudor we is there. It is. I love that. That's incredible.

32:05OK, so then last one for this section. We're all about highlighting the women in the past. As you know, your book is called Queens and Kings which I like. So who is your favourite queen and why? My usual answer to this is the one who said that she may have the body of but a weak and feeble woman but the heart and stomach of a king and of a king of England too. I think Elizabeth I is everybody's first choice because she's so impressive in so many ways but as a historian

32:36I like complicated and I like not necessarily likeable and I've spent a lot of time in the company of Queen Victoria who is both of those things. To me, she's the messy but preferable alternative. She is a good pick and she's nice and complex so we get a bit of everything with her don't we? Okay, so now in your new book and actually elsewhere you've described your role as chief curator as the best job in history. Can you tell us why? Why is it the best job? Well, I was forced

33:07to skip through the centuries and cover and cover all the juiciest the best-known bits of history and just having access to the palaces their collections there's a 10,000 piece collection of historic costume at Hampton Court going back to a hat worn by Henry VIII there were jewels at Kensington Palace there were instruments of torture at the Tower of London just the content the subject matter is so rich and enjoyable and one of the advantages

33:38that royal historians have is that the king the queen often are the best recorded person alive at any given moment the records for the these human beings these individuals are really dense and also a queen or a king comes with a great slice of life attached in the form of the royal household so they are surrounded by all of these servants so the court is a kind of a microcosm of the world in a way it's endlessly fascinating yeah it gives you

34:09a really nice perspective to look at a certain period of time doesn't it okay so now finally

Stepping down and what is next

34:14at the end of 2024 you stepped down from the role of chief curator and if you'd like to tell us a little bit about why you can do but looking to the future what's next do you think well the simple answer is I had a big birthday I turned 50 and a lot of people evaluate their life at that moment and I'd been there for 20 years and I thought I see an opportunity for personal growth here which is to step outside Surrey basically and one of the things that I did was go to the BBC and said look I'm leaving

34:44my palace life how about you send me to some other palaces around the world because I longed to travel and amazingly they said yes so the next series I've got coming up on the BBC is going to be called Keys to the Castle and in it I got to visit the Doge's Palace in Venice for two weeks in a sunny October yeah look at your face oh my god it was difficult and dangerous work but I did it for you and we went to

35:14the Palace of Versailles similarly and we visited the amazing castle of Neuschwanstein do you know it it was built by King Ludwig of Bavaria and it's the crazy castle from the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang oh my goodness the one with all the mad turrets that sounds incredible it was so that's coming soon yes this autumn that's your next next project and obviously the book which we've been talking about today another project yes so you've got lots going on then it's been very busy I've stepped out of palace life but I haven't finished with the past absolutely not and that is a very good note to end on

35:44thank you so much for talking to us about it today it's been brilliant thank you for having me that was Lucy Worsley speaking to Charlotte Vosper Lucy is the former chief curator at Historic Royal Palaces a historian presenter and author of several best-selling books her latest book is Queens and Kings An Unusually Personal History and it's available now CEO

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37:51Hi, this is Sam from the Good Food Podcast. If you love all things good food, join us at the festive Good Food Show from the 26th to the 29th of November at Birmingham's NEC. With a line-up of James Martin, John Turow, Lisa Faulkner, Pinkoombs, and more, you'll be able to get plenty of cooking ideas for your Christmas entertaining. Find out more at goodfoodshow.com. See you there.