Clare Nasir, 'weather girl', and her assistant
Maids of Honour tarts at Steyning
'George III's bath'!
A lovely picture of Hardwick Hall
The tapestry wash building
The David Dickinson Show
The Curse of the Hope Diamond
Replica mantua hoops, and Fi Glover
Yep, that's a human colon
Georgian shoe
Queen Vic
Reconstructing an Elizabethan toilet
At Dennis Severs's house in Spitalfields
Making wallpaper using Morris's block
Kent's ceiling for The Queen's Stairs, HCP
Swarkestone Pavilion
Filming in the Hall of Mirrors
The hole in the shutter made by jewel robbers!
Back at my old school
England's Past for Everyone
Museum of London costume stores
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27 July Was wrong footed today by the very quick interviewer on Late Night Live, on ABC Radio National Australia. LW: 'Mohammed, George I's Turkish valet, helped him get dressed, and even treated his haemorrhoids. He was really important, 'cos he had the ear of the king...' Interviewer: 'You mean the rear of the king.' Also today, my summer reading choices are up on George Miller's lovely 'Podularity' website.
16 July Scary, scary. I had to chair a discussion on 'Making the Past Popular' at the Dartington Hall 'Ways With Words' Festival, with Antonia Fraser and Juliet Nicolson. Four hundred pairs of eyes were watching from the depths of the Great Hall, but I think we did a good job. Due to a mix-up (I wrongly thought Dartington Hall would be near Dartmouth) we ended up getting a very expensive taxi to our beds! But I do recommend Strete Barton House, and the nearby sea swimming. 6 July I sprang from my bed at 4.30 to be an assistant GMTV weather girl for the morning. (Though really, how can it be possible that such a demeaning phrase is still in common use?) As well as the weather we managed to cover Henry VIII, Shakespeare, Katherine Howard, James I and Katherine of Braganza's fertility problems.
27 June I'm excited to be one of the judges of this year's 'Young Quill' Awards, which are for children's historical fiction. 18 June Been writing in The Guardian about archaeology and Caravaggio. 16 June I had a lovely evening in Steyning, guest of its History Society and bookshop, and they had made special Courtiers-related cakes, including Maids of Honour tarts! Long live all such independent bookshops.
14 June All the curators went to Kew Gardens, intending to visit Queen Charlotte's cottage, but we were defeated by a rainstorm. We took refuge in the kitchens, where we saw George III's bathtub (third picture down, and mentioned below). 7 June Ah, the wonders of the internet. Am delighted to have been sent a beautiful photo of Hardwick Hall by a cyber-friend in Suffolk. (I mention this pour encourager les autres.)
26 May Tapestry wash at Hampton Court Palace today. They're reaching down with their sponges to loosen the dirt, then the big boom comes over to spray it with water. A wet, dirty tapestry smells like an old goat.
25 May OK, after this I promise to leave you alone and not to appear on your TV or radio for at least a week. But today's appearance was on The David Dickinson Show at 3pm on ITV1. My fellow guests were Brit Eckland and Liz from Atomic Kitten. A historian's life gets curiouser and curioser.
23 May I'll be on Channel 4, 8pm, tomorrow, in 'The Curse of the Hope Diamond'. Do watch this, it was such fun exploring the story of this fabulous but rather sinister jewel - it put me right off the idea of owning a diamond myself. I haven't actually seen the finished programme yet, but as well as appearing as a historian, I've been told that you can also see me as an extra flapper in the 1930s cocktail party scene.
22 May 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.
16 May Tomorrow our programme in the BBC's 'History of the World' series (which uses museum treasures to tell great stories from English history) called 'King Alfred ... the Great?' goes out on BBC1, in the South, at 7.30pm. Watch a clip here, or better still, join us tomorrow night, or on Iplayer! 6 May 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. 5 May Publication week of new book = in a bit of a frazzle. I'll be back when I'm better company.
28 April I was feeling rather big-headed about being in The Evening Standard last night. But my hairdresser, Ange, rightly put me in my place. 'Next time you have your picture taken', she said, 'you really need to come in to me for a blow-dry first'. 20 April 2010 My fellow curator Susanne is a very naughty prankster. She took many people in when she claimed to have 'discovered' a photograph of Kew Palace showing George III looking out of the window. Her latest was to tell everyone she had a valuable Hogarth print to show us. Then, to everyone's horror, she accidentally ripped [a photocopied] print as she took it out of the envelope. But the last laugh may be on Susanne - she now claims (with very good reason) to have discovered George III's bath-tub. And no one believes her! 18 April An enjoyable week of high-brow historical cut-and-thrust draws to an end. Check this out particularly for Amanda Vickery's rather brilliant response to David Starkey's comments of last Sunday! 16 April Thanks to all the North American visitors who visited me after seeing Henry VIII on the National Geographic Channel. I was particularly delighted to hear from Hank in Los Angeles, who compliments me upon the 'devilish sparkle' in my eye. 12 April Cor blimey, Historic Royal Palaces received 3.38 million visitors in 2009-10. This is the highest figure in a decade, and everyone's pleased as punch. 7 April A review of my Courtiers book in Waterstones Books Quarterly made me laugh today. According to their chap, the lovely-sounding David Lovely, it reads 'like an 18th-century version of Heat magazine'. Three cheers for that! 25 March Our new exhibition 'The Enchanted Palace' opened at Kensington Palace today. It's genuinely the most innovative project I've worked on while at Historic Royal Palaces and I beg you to visit it. Rather gratifyingly Google lists 103 news stories today. Here's just one. 20 March There's an article about my new book COURTIERS in April's History Today. Cheapskate potential purchasers may be interested in the special discount offer mentioned at the bottom! 16 March All is chaos at Kensington Palace as the new exhibition 'The Enchanted Palace' is installed. Today the milliner Stephen Jones brought in his hats. 11 March At the opening of 'Victoria & Albert, Love and Art' at Buckingham Palace this evening, the Prince of Wales mentioned that the baby in this picture, the Duke of Connaught, was the godfather of his 'own mama', the Queen. That's one of those brilliant facts along the lines of 'my grandfather used to know a women whom as a baby was hoisted onto the saddle of a soldier going to Waterloo', etc. 10 March Big day - final day's filming on 'If Walls Could Talk', and on top of that I became a 'Woman to Watch in the arts' with a place on a list of 50 'emerging female leaders' who make 'a contribution to cultural life across the UK'. At the launch event Jenni Murray made a brilliant joke about cockpits, which I won't repeat here. Read all about it. 9 March Tomorrow is the very last day of filming for 'If Walls Could Talk, An Intimate History of the Home'. 'Phew', but also 'Alas'. 23 February I took a dip in the sea at Bognor Regis (air temperature 4 degrees!) wearing my Georgian swimming costume (if Andrew Marr can do it, so can I). Teeth chattered a bit during a piece to camera on the way out again! Was rewarded with fish and chips for lunch. 19 February That top picture shows an attempt to recreate Sir John Harrington's flushing toilet of 1596. Great work was done with the saw and drill by producer James and plumber Andy, and there was triumph all round when IT REALLY WORKED! We successfully flushed down some cherry tomatoes to stand in for excrement. 11 February Two days of filming at Dennis Severs' house in Folgate Street, Spitalfields. Having been round many times as a rapt visitor, I was intrigued to learn how the house actually works behind the scenes. The secrets I discovered which I cannot reveal! This particular sequence was about Georgian lighting: by candlelight you can see how the gilding on Georgian furniture, the silver in Georgian dresses, even the gold rim around dining plates, are all intended to sparkle and make the available light go further. You can see here how my dress makes me into a human silver candlestick. Also enjoyed a Georgian tea party with Amanda Vickery and Jane Pettigrew. 25 January At the Sandersons factory in Loughborough, I had the PRIVILEGE of making William Morris wallpaper using an original Morris block. Unfortunately my efforts looked rather like those potato print pictures kids make at playgroup. Not as easy as it looks! 24 January SUCH a fun day, spent in the home of Miss Lola Lamour, also known as Joanne, 1950s enthusiast. We tried to make cupcakes using her original Kenwood mixer, but I think we used the wrong attachment. The ingredients all lept out like a small volcano.
20 January Yes, I know it isn't very cool to brag about compliments one has received, but bear with me, this one is really great. A lovely lady in Finland writes: 'I've watched TV programs of Yours. I'm very happy to tell you that those programs they are refreshing unlike some 'traditional' history documents. There are enough those 'old cave mans' who are bumbling their sayings with a huge pokerface'. Long live Finland, home of the Moomins, and of this discerning lady! 14 January 2010 Pomander day. I had to take a pomander to work today because it was the end of my week following a Tudor personal hygiene regime: no bath or shower. Or shampoo, toothpaste or deodorant. The pomander was made according to George Cavendish's description of Cardinal Wolsey's: an orange with the meat removed, replaced with a sponge soaked in vinegar: the whole studded with cloves and tied with a red ribbon. It SMELT gorgeous, and I have to say it also LOOKED better than the one carried by Sam Neill as Cardinal Wolsey in The Tudors. 11 January 2010 A busy day back at the office at Hampton Court. I felt like Mrs Delaney, c. 1750: 'she works for all hours and occasions, and finds full employment for her hands even between the coolings of her cup of tea'. 31 December 2009 A wonderful Xmas at Swarkestone Pavilion, built in the 1630s for William Cavendish's step-daughter Cate, and probably designed by John Smithson. I first visited years ago,while researching my PhD on dear old Smithson. This visit I spent my time devouring biographies of Alan Clark, James Lees-Milne, and France Partridge. The state of my belly suggests that I might have devoured some Xmas cake as well. Happy New Year to all my intelligent, elegant and swelligent readers! There've now been more than 1,500 of you since I started my site in August, and I've loved hearing from everyone who's written in. (Yes, even the nutters.) 21 December 2009 My article about Queen Caroline is just out in The Georgian, and you can book to hear me going on even more about my favourite queen at the Georgian Group in June. 20 December 2009 I've been cold, tired and hungry for most of December, but I've also been having a glorious time. For the 'If Walls Could Talk' series, I've been down a Victorian sewer, spent the night in a Tudor bed, worn eighteenth-century underwear in public, cooked eight Tudor chickens on a spit and done a load of Tudor laundry using urine kindly provided by a man called Brian. 15 December 2009 Today we filmed a scene about the public dressing of Queen Caroline by her Mistress of the Robes, Lady of the Bedchamber, Woman of the Bedchamber, Dresser and Page. I was poor old Caroline, shivering in my linen shift in the Queen's Bedchamber at Hampton Court, and the Mistress, Women, Lady, etc., were played by my colleagues from Conservation and Collections Care. The roles of 'other members of the court come to watch the fun' was nobly undertaken by an Australian family, fresh off the plane from Melbourne, and visiting the palace. 1 December 2009 Saw today a picture of the dress Vivienne Westwood is lending to our exhibition 'The Enchanted Palace' at Kensington Palace next year. It's big, red and fabulous, and will be displaying on a mannequin running down the King's Grand Staircase, like Cinderella. Gonna be great. 24 November 2009 Just back from Versailles on a trip for Channel 4, for a programme about the stealing of the French Crown Jewels in 1792. The most exciting part was seeing the HOLE in the SHUTTER that STILL remains at the Royal Warehouse (now the HQ of the French Marines), from when the jewels were pinched. The robbers simply shimmied up the outside of the building, cut through the glass, and then the wooden shutter. 19 November 2009 Our friends from the Association of the Royal Residences of Europe are in town. We had our huge annual AGM at Hampton Court this year, with members attending from the Swedish Royal Collection, Godollo Palace (Hungary), the Prussian palace organisation (Berlin-Brandenberg), Chambord, Mafra (Portugal), Patrimonio Nacionale (Madrid), Wilanow Palace (Warsaw), Versailles, the Danish Royal Palaces and Collection, Peterhof (Russia) and the Palais Charles Quint (Brussels). Much Euro-fun was had by all. 12 November 2009 To my old school, St Bartholomew's, in Newbury, to present 93 prizes at awards night. The present pupils are so darn clever and hard-working that it took what seemed like hours. It was shocking to find that Mr Sharpe and Mr King have first names. Simply could not bring myself to use them. 11 November 2009 To the Broadway Cinema in Nottingham today to give a talk to roughly 300 fellow Cavendish enthusiasts. Overheard during sale of books afterwards: 'Does this book contain the pornographic poetry she quoted in her talk? It does? In that case I'll definitely buy it'. 9 November 2009 Enjoyed a morning with the writers of the CBBC show 'Horrible Histories'. They were like eight human joke-machines, firing off gags every ten seconds. They described their writing process as follows: 'we read history books until we find something that makes us laugh. Then we write a sketch about it'. Brilliant. 4 November 2009 This evening I learnt, at a talk by Tracy Chevalier, that Regency fossil collector Mary Anning, when walking below the cliffs along the beach at Lyme Regis, would wear a MAN'S TOP HAT to protect her from falling debris. 29 October 2009 My new TV series was announced today in Broadcast magazine. Of even greater interest is the fact that the Lord Chamberlain told me this evening that he's having his white stick or 'wand' of office re-designed, by (who else?) wand expert J.K. Rowling. Isn't that fabulous? 23 October 2009 Interviewed today for The One Show on BBC1 about the Reformation (by the super-smooth Giles Brandreth). We were in the Council Chamber at Hampton Court. This was the very room where Henry VIII and his advisers came up with the idea of breaking with Rome so that Henry could grant himself his own divorce (in the light of the Pope's refusal to do so). It's topical because the Pope has relaxed entry requirements for the Catholic church, and is either (a.) healing the breach or (b.) poaching Anglicans, depending on which way you look at it. |