An interview in Good Housekeeping to celebrate THE AUSTEN GIRLS

To celebrate the publication of THE AUSTEN GIRLS, my friends at Good Housekeeping magazine have kindly run an interview with me conducted by the imitable Ella Dove … thank you! 

She makes no apology for dressing up to make history more interesting, and here Lucy Worsley talks to Ella Dove about her passion for the past, female ambition, and being stood up by Johnny Depp.

Deep within the sprawling labyrinth of Hampton Court Palace lies a little wooden door.  At first glance, it appears unremarkable, but it is here, at the top of turret, that Lucy Worsley, chief curator at Historic Royal Palaces, can be found.  That is when she’s not penning books or ‘larking around on the television in a stupid costume’ – her words, not mine – presenting her iconic history programme, which she films for the BBC.

She greets me with a wide, open smile.  With yellow leather glove-clad hands, she types a code into an incongruously modern keypad on the ancient stone wall and a hidden door clicks open.  ‘I hope you’re okay with steps,’ says Lucy.  ‘There are 51 here.  We often have to give people 10 minutes to catch their breath when they reach the top.’  She turns and skips up said staircase with the ease of someone who has done so a thousand times before.

To my slight disappointment, Lucy is not dressed as a Georgian lady or a Victorian housemaid, nor is she sporting the full Anne Boleyn costume complete with warts and an extra finger that she wore on her recent BBC Four show Royal History’s Biggest Fibs With Lucy Worsley.  Instead, she’s a picture of 21^st-century chic.  ‘We’ll have tea in the library,’ she says.  She shepherds me into a small cosy room.  Books and files line the walls, and there is a sense of organised chaos.  As she pours the tea, I feel like I’ve stepped into a Jane Austen novel.  And well I might, for we’re here in part to discuss Lucy’s latest book for children, The Austen Girls, which explores the novelist’s life from the perspective of her nieces.

So why Austen in particular?  ‘I’m on a stealth mission to make girls interested in history,’ she says.  ‘Jane Austen lived in a repressed hierarchical society, where the expectation was purely for her to get married.  But instead, she decided to become a writer.  I want to show girls that they, too, can overcome the barriers of life and do something important.  I’m know I’m not to say my books are just for girls, but they kind of are.  Boys have other advantages in life.’

As a child, Lucy always had her head in a book.  ‘My way into what I do now was reading historical novels,’ she says. But initially, her father, a geologist, convinced her to take science A levels.  After a term, her mother noticed she was unhappy.  ‘My father was furious when I switched to history,’ she recalls.  ‘He said if I did a history degree, I’d end up cleaning toilets for a living.  He’s so fed up of being reminded of that because it has become a sort of stick that I beat him with.’

Lucy read ancient and modern history at Oxford.  In 1995, she began her career as a curator at Milton Manor House, in nearby Abingdon, going on to work as an inspector of historic buildings for English Heritage while also completing her doctorate.  She became chief curator at Historic Royal Palaces in 2003, and was approached by the History Channel in 2009 to present her first TV show, Inside the Body of Henry VIII.  As well as her four-book young adult series, she has written a multitude of historical guidebooks and biographies.  In 2018, she was awarded an OBE for services to history and heritage.

Her passion for history shines with every sentence.  ‘I never tire of coming to work’, she enthuses.  ‘There are around 1,324 rooms here and, at lunchtime every day, I try to explore a different one.  There’s always something to discover.’  Slipping into guide-mode, she tells me the rooms in which we are sitting were originally built for baby Edward VI – Henry VIII’s much-wanted son – but were burnt in a fire in the 19^th century.  ‘It’s a Victorian rebuilding of a Tudor room,’ she says precisely, a stickler for detail.

When I tell her I trust her explanation, she shakes her head like a cross teacher.  ‘Well, you shouldn’t, she reprimands with a twinkle in her eye.  ‘The attitude of historians, of questioning the world, is an important life skill.’  Once, she tells me, she showed actor Tom Hiddleston around Hampton Court Palace and she was dismayed by his lack of questions.  ‘The only thing he asked me was, ‘Are there any ghosts?’’  She gives an impish smile.  ‘I could tell her wasn’t really interested, so I just said, ‘Yes’!’

And is the palace haunted?  ‘I don’t believe in ghosts because they don’t exist,’ she responds in that schoolteacher tone.  ‘I’m much more afraid of serial killers!  Saying that, I’m fascinated by why people think they’ve seen ghosts.  The palace is steeped in so much history that you do feel the weight of that as you walk about, but I think that’s a friendly feeling, not a scary one.’

So what is it she loves most about history?  ‘Some people might be snobbish about me dressing up and say, ‘Oh no, that’s not proper historical enquiry,’ she wags her finger in imitation.  ‘I disagree.  The only criticism I take seriously is when people ask, ‘Would they make a man do this?  Is it a gender thing and, therefore, is it acceptable? I think the entertainment is like a gateway drug, the marijuana of history – you can then get addicted to more serious things later,’ says Lucy.  ‘Oh dear!’ she exclaims suddenly, shaking her head.  ‘This is very unfortunate.  I’m using drug analogies.  I’ll try to keep things clean from now on.’

‘Naughty’ though it may be, it is phrasing like this that encapsulates Lucy’s effortless and unique charm; knowledge underpinned by infectious humour.  ‘I’m an advocate of anything that brings history to the mainstream,’ she says. ‘Generally, the nitty-gritty of how people lived their daily lives is what people are interested in.  Plus, it appeals to my narcissistic love of dressing up.’

Lucy seldom mentions her husband, architect Mark Hines.  ‘He’s asked me not to talk about him and I have to respect that,’ she explains.  In fact, the only time she refers to Mark is when she tells me how she once ditched him for Johnny Depp.  ‘His agent requested an after-hours tour of Hampton Court because he was here filming, but I was meant to be meeting Mark at a party that night,’ she says.  ‘I waited until 8pm when I was told that Johnny was tired and had gone home.  The wretched man stood me up!’

Her decision not to have children has also been widely commented upon.  ‘I was naïve when I said that,’ she admits.  ‘I never thought it would offend anyone, but it did.  A lot of my friends are also childless by choice.  I think it’s because growing up in the 1970s, our mothers had been expected to have children.  So, as a reaction to that, they drummed into us the important of career.  These days, there’s more ambivalence, but I still think it’s a sacrifice in terms of time, earning power and status in society.  Something has to give, but it’s wrong that it has to give more for women than men.  I’ve had the privilege of being able to dedicate myself to my work in a way that I wouldn’t have been able to do if I’d had kids.’

She feels a duty to proclaim herself as ambitious ‘because ambition is considered to be a dirty word for women.   In fact, I once had a letter of complaint that said, ‘I don’t like that Lucy Worsley, she’s clearly ambitious.’  Funnily enough, it was from a man.

Lucy is certainly driven.  When she’s not curating or filming, she’s writing her books in the evenings and on the train to work, running, cooking, or ‘taking in the air’ in London’s parks.  ‘I like to be in motion,’ she muses.

Does she feel optimistic about the future?  ‘I do.  I think you have to be,’ she says.  ‘History leaves you with a sense that nothing is inevitable.  The past is not a guide to the future and sometimes things go backwards, but history shows us that it doesn’t have to be the way it is.  Once you appreciate that everything changes all the time, ther eis hope that maybe the world will be better again, one day.’

The Austen Girls (Bloomsbury Children’s Books) by Lucy Worsley is out now.