Category Archives: A curator’s life
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,
Continue ReadingThe last baby princess at Kensington Palace: the new Princess Charlotte’s predecessor…
My article written for t’paper, reproduced here for you… ‘SO, there’s a new baby princess at Kensington Palace – born in time for breakfast on Saturday and back home in time for tea. It’s very nearly two hundred years since the last time Kensington Palace was home to a baby princess. The future Queen Victoriawas born there at 4
Continue ReadingA Girl’s Guide to Greatness, or How Not to Write an Obituary
Last summer, as I was reading through the 1,000 or so pages of The Times Great Women’s Lives: A Celebration in Obituaries in preparation for writing its foreword, I was struck by how ridiculous and retrograde it was for so many of the obituaries to concentrate on the women’s hair, cooking skills and home life.
Continue ReadingI’m going to be busy on Xmas Day
Dear Friends, the curators’ office Hampton Court this week has felt a bit like a sinking ship as one by one people have come into my room to say, ‘Well, I’m off now for the holidays. See you next year!’ I’m clinging on to the bitter end myself, having already had my holiday skiing a
Continue ReadingPreview: The Museum of London’s Sherlock Holmes exhibition, opens 17th October
My preview from the Express this weekend… Sherlock fans! The game’s afoot. From Friday we’ll be able to get closer than ever to the greatest detective who never lived. Better still, we’ll be able to travel back in time to visit his foggy, gas-lit and crime-ridden city. The Museum of London’s new Sherlock Holmes exhibition opens this
Continue ReadingReading old diaries – and very interesting it is too! (For me, at least.)
Over the last few weeks I’ve been re-reading some old diaries of mine, because I’m going to take part in a radio programme called ‘My Teenage Diary’. As you can see from this picture of my big box of old diaries, I have plenty of material from which to choose. Ooh, and even if I
Continue ReadingOn writing history articles in peer-reviewed journals.
Warning: this post gets a bit technical and may only be of interest to hard-core historians. It’s exactly ten years since I learned that my first book was to be published by Faber & Faber. I remember getting the phone call at work, in our Monday morning management team meeting. I’d left my phone switched
Continue ReadingI am made Queen of Everything (but just for a week)
If you’re a female commuter in the London area, chances are that you might occasionally pick up the free Stylist magazine – after all, the excellent Lucy Mangan has a column in it. Recently I was ‘Queen of Everything’, the interview slot at the back. It might be a little confusing because I spend a
Continue ReadingWe try to win our colonies back, with a royal progress round the US.
If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook then you’ll know that I have recently made a whirlwind tour of America. I was giving a number of lectures to supporters of the Royal Oak Foundation, which is the American organization that exists to support the British National Trust. I’ve been on their lecture tours before,
Continue ReadingWhere are all the female trolls? From the horrid to the heartwarming…
It’s really quite striking that the nasty emails I receive (usually about my voice, it seems) are all from men. Come on, ladies! You need to make up for lost ground here. The male trolls are way ahead of you. Usually I just press delete, but occasionally I call a troll out, and even more
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