Category Archives: If Walls book/TV
The secret life of furniture (from yesterday’s Times)
I recently had the pleasure and privilege of going round the V&A’s new furniture gallery, which opens this week, and writing about it for yesterday’s Times. Here’s my piece: ‘I’ve a great respect for things!’ says Madame Merle, in Henry James’s 1881 novel A Portrait of a Lady. ‘We’re each of us made up of some cluster
Continue ReadingLarking around in bed at Avebury Manor
Here’s an article about royal sleeping arrangements from the new National Trust magazine. We did have fun larking around in the bed taking the photos! Sleeping Beauties Visit our country houses and you’ll soon run across the phenomenon that is the ‘state bed’. Reserved for rare royal visits, these status symbols represented the most expensive item
Continue ReadingNew Radio 3 series ‘Lucy Worsley’s Kensington’. And false teeth.
Hello, yep, I have a new radio series coming up. I’m guessing that you’re asking yourself the question I hear practically every day: ‘How on earth does she fit it all in?’ Here are my answers: firstly, I’m insanely energetic. Secondly, I enjoy my work, so it doesn’t feel like work to me. And third,
Continue ReadingWare you should be this summer – in The Great Bed
Yesterday I was pleased and proud to have been asked to open the new exhibition at Ware Museum, Hertfordshire. They’ve got back their Great Bed on loan, for a year, from the Victoria and Albert Museum. Make sure you don’t miss seeing it in its home town! It was a glorious day, Ware’s church-bells were
Continue ReadingAn Intimate History of Your Home – a new article from the History Today blog
Hello there. As my latest book is out in paperback this week, I thought you might enjoy an article explaining what it’s all about. This was published yesterday on History Today’s blog. Do check the rest of their site out too, heaps of interesting things. ‘My everyday routine as Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces takes me
Continue ReadingI am photographed as Marie Antoinette
It’s a big deal being photographed by Julia Fullerton-Batten, as I was recently for the New Yorker. (‘For the New Yorker’. Note how coolly I toss that out? Believe me, my nonchalance is feigned.) The first indication that something extraordinary was coming up was my being asked if I had a preferred make-up artist and
Continue ReadingI defend my bonnet again! Well, not literally – but I explain my philosophy
Interview by Tim Jones in the Borehamwood Times Historian, author and broadcaster Lucy Worsley is the chief curator of Historic Royal Palaces, the independent charity that looks after Hampton Court Palace, the Tower of London and Kensington Palace among others. Tim Jones spoke to her about her mission to make history as popular as the
Continue ReadingIn my (tea) cups tonight on BBC4
Well, you wait all your life to be interviewed about tea-cups, and then it happens three times in quick succession. I’m with C.S. Lewis when he said that ‘you can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me’, and tea is my favourite drink. I also like
Continue ReadingA quick history of domestic lighting
The history of domestic lighting has been governed by economics, but also by snobbery and tradition, and occasionally by a dangerous desire for novelty. As ‘If Walls Could Talk’ is being repeated on the TV at the moment, I thought you might enjoy a quick history of domestic lighting. Yawn, what a dull subject, you
Continue ReadingMarvellous fan mail
Ladies and gentlemen, may I proudly introduce Emily, who says she is ‘maybe’ my No. 1 fan? (Note it’s only ‘maybe’, Emily is playing hard to get.) Anyway, Emily has not only written me this cute letter, she has also sent drawings of me in outfits from the Middle Ages, the Tudors, the Victorians and the
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