Category Archives: Courtiers book
Poor Queen Caroline and her horrible death…
This week on The First Georgians (Thursday, 9pm, BBC Four) we are covering the life and the horrible death of the wonderful queen Caroline. So here’s an extract from my book Courtiers. It’s part of the chapter about Caroline’s death, which was absolutely my favourite to write. You can also see a video of me reading
Continue Reading‘You rang, Majesty?’ … an article about royal servants
With Downton Abbey back again, and an interesting-looking new series on domestic service beginning this week on BBC2, here’s a relevant article I wrote a couple of years ago for the BBC Who Do You Think You Are? magazine. It’s about how go about your research if you think ancestors of yours may have worked
Continue ReadingAn interview about ‘Courtiers’ for the History Today Book Club
Extract from History Today, January edition, 2012 Each month we recommend a work of history recently published in paperback. We discuss the book with its author and invite readers to contribute to the dialogue on our website. The History Today Book Club recommendation for January is Courtiers; The Secret History of Kensington Palace (Faber & Faber) by
Continue ReadingPoor old Peter the Wild Boy – article in The Telegraph
Here’s an article about Peter the Wild Boy which appeared in the Telegraph a little while ago. He also has his own page here, an extract from my book about him and his colleagues in the royal household called Courtiers, The Secret History of the Georgian Court. National Treaures Live: Peter, the feral child who captivated
Continue ReadingA wild week for Peter the Wild Boy
This week Peter the Wild Boy was on the radio as part of the Making History programme on Radio 4, and he also popped up in our new video on the Historic Royal Palaces Youtube channel. He was written about in The Guardian, and in the Daily Mail as well. The excitement was all caused
Continue ReadingExcellent taste is demonstrated
Excellent taste is demonstrated over at The Telegraph by their picking my ‘Courtiers’ as one of their ‘Books of the Year’. They say it ‘reveals the complexity, anxiety and pathos behind the façade of those caught up in the golden circle of the Court’. (Hear, hear.)
Continue ReadingTo Berkhamsted
To Berkhamsted, to lay some flowers at Peter the Wild Boy’s grave. Also to the school to see his iron collar once again and to film it. We interviewed the school librarian, who was young and cool, not at all what we were expecting!
Continue ReadingOld Operating Theatre Museum at St Thomas’s Hospital
Just back from a visit to the Old Operating Theatre Museum at St Thomas’s Hospital in Southwark. There I was particularly glad to see a picture of Margaret White, the first recorded woman to survive an operation for a strangulated umbilical hernia, i.e. the condition that killed poor old (contemporary) Queen Caroline. She could
Continue ReadingReplica set of whalebone hoops
So, if you want to see the replica set of whalebone hoops I was talking about on Saturday Live this morning, here’s a picture of Fi Glover in the studio with them. I’m told that I turned several stomachs with my description of Queen Caroline’s heroic but gory end.
Continue ReadingGreen silk brocade shoes from the 1740s
If you would like to see the green silk brocade shoes from the 1740s that I took into the Woman’s Hour studio yesterday, look left.
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