Q&A with Dr. Lucy Worsley | Lucy Worsley's Royal Myths & Secrets

hi and welcome my name is Paul Dolan I am the chair of the history department at the University of Vermont and I am so excited to be here today with dr. Lucy Worsley who is live from her home in London with us and is here to talk about the current series running on PBS that she is hosting on many of you may have seen Lucy before on a very British romance with Lucy Worsley on PBS or on one of her many BBC shows she is also an author and most significantly her day job is as chief curator at historic royal palaces so welcome to Lucy and thanks for being with us today I'm going to ask some questions of Lucy and we'll have a conversation but we're also looking for questions from the audience and as we proceed through our discussion I will try to feed those questions to Lucy and get you the answers you're looking for so let me start off Lucy by just simply asking you about your role as chief curator at historic royal palaces and ask you to think to tell me a little bit about how you came to that job and also just to give us some insights and dirt on what it's like to work at the Royal historic historic houses how I made my way into the world of history which is I always loved history at school but my father is a scientist and he was very keen that I would become a scientist like him so at the end of high school I said okay I'm going to study chemistry and biology and math sort of halfway through this course and there came this day when I changed to history and I had to go and tell my dad that I've done this and he was furious about it and he said if you do a history degree my girl you will be cleaning toilets for a living and he's also really fed up of me telling this story now so I did follow my dream and I did a history degree and then I did a PhD in architectural history actually and I worked in a different variety of heritage organizations like the Society for the Protection ancient buildings and English heritage until I made my way to historic royal palaces which is the independent charity which looks after the unoccupied royal palaces of London we get no money from the government or the royal family and we deserve your financial support and people often ask me well what borders you work there include and basically it's having fun I don't I don't tell the boss that but that's really what it is we the curators acquire new treasures for the collection we work on exhibitions and displays we do things like the audio guide like the guide books go out and give history talks which is what I'm doing now that's also do research into into you know what we might present in the future according to the changing needs of our visitors yeah fabulous can you tell us a little bit about how you locate new treasures how you go about acquiring them or where you get clues about them from lots of different routes really in the in the good old days before the virus we actually have an acquisition objects we like most museums and heritage organisations we're in a bad place financially just now because our visitors you normally pay for our conservation and education work cannot visit happy that's not quite true because as of yesterday you can come to the gardens at Hanson court really significant step it's there's a long way to go but that's a really positive thing so we have our acquisitions budget sometimes we sell buy buy things at auction hopefully we hear that things are coming up and we get word of it beforehand and we do a private deal sometimes people give us wonderful things they're all sort of variety of different routes I suppose and it's my job to receive a succession of acquisition proposals from nine curatorial colleagues and we decide which of the ones that are going to add the most value to our collection I see a very complex process well it's shopping it's the shopping is Glenn no it's true it's true little bit about what excites you about history because I think one of the things that I always encounter as a professor of history is students who will say to me well I didn't find history all that exciting when I was in school and I've come to University and now I've discovered that there are all sorts of options for historians so then you can tell us a little bit about when you find exciting and invigorating about the study of history well I personally think there are three main reasons to study history and the first of those is pure enjoyment pleasure isn't there about learning about the people at the past and they're they're funny little quirks and the sorts of historian that I am is a social historian basically I'm I'm not saying that um they're his history of diplomatic affairs or constitutional history or that sort of thing aren't important they are it's just not so strong I am I like the nitty gritty dirty detail of daily life and I know that the people who come to Hampton Court Palace really love that too you know they think they have to ask questions about the aesthetic of the block or the politics is the Reformation but what they really want to know about is the toilets and that's fine with me there's just the pleasure of the past but I think you and I would both agree there's another reason to study history is the skills that you develop those skills of analysis and judgment the ability to detect when a source is lying to you which aren't just history skills are they absolutely and the third reason that I've been thinking about a lot recently is the sense of perspective busy gives you so you know people often say the past is a guide to a few to the future which is is Tritan ridiculous and you know this holds no meaning really but what you do get from history is a sense of change over time sometimes things get better sometimes things get worse but you know if you're in a bad place it will get better and that's a thought that I've been holding on to these last 12 weeks absolutely absolutely it's a good point to think about history I've been thinking a lot about history in the history of plagues and pandemics as well so um we are getting some questions Lucy so I'm going to pass them on from the audience the first one I'll ask you is from Lauren and Lauren asked who's the one person in history that if you could meet you would like to meet well she also says that she loves you and the person I would like to meet is the monarch who said that she might have the body of a weak and feeble woman but the heart and stomach of a king and of course it is Queen Elizabeth the first but I also got just got a general sauce for I guess for challenging slightly difficult sometimes snarky women from history and fluffy about her she's indomitable she's impressive she sometimes prickly she sometimes nasty and also in that group I would actually add my favorite author who's Jane Austen take you to pieces and also another sort of pandemic person I've been thinking about a lot recently is Florence Nightingale in England set up the nursing profession and established you know that that that call of compassionate care of the sick but what a lot of people don't realize about Florence Nightingale is that she was the most fantastic statistician as well and she would have she wanted loved the panting damn it but she would have been so helpful in all the modeling and so on that's going on and then what she did that's really impressive is that she crazed and nags the authorities to try to make things better mm-hmm so if you read Victorians biographies of these these people you might get a bit of sort of bit scary bit snarky bit nasty but that appeals they often leave the best records to write those folks um we have another question I mean this sort of takes us I'm sort of moving more into the subject matter of rural myths and secrets so particularly the the episodes that airing on Vermont PBS but we have a question from Eric who asked if you have a favorite masterpiece theater program which is sort of the you know the the various airing of BBC shows that we have over in the United States hi Eric I like your question and I think well I like many of them I enjoy dancing I be I enjoyed Poldark I think it's coming if you haven't yes the one I sort of feel particularly caught up in is the show about Victoria and the reason I've had a little bit to do with that one I have you know visited the set met the stars the reason I've had a little bit to do with that one is because one of the historic royal palaces which my charity looks after he's Kensington Palace which is Queen Victoria's birthplace and where she grew up in a slightly strange lonely childhood and we have we look after the room in which aged eighteen and three weeks she became the Queen so the UK premiere of Victoria was held at Kensington Palace and I'm very good friends with the writer of it a wonderful woman whose name's Stacey Goodwin and she has told me the coolest thing which is that if it ever comes back for another series which I think is challenging because Jenna Coleman and the stars you know though they've got so much work on but if it ever comes back for another series she's going to write a part for me giving you a sense of what that part might be huge fake bokkeum palace that they have which is constructed in an aircraft hangar just outside this funny tiny little airport that's called Leeds West International Airport or something on one plane in the day lands there but in one of their hangars they've got this amazing recreation of Palace which is where they do all their filming intrigued by the sets because sometimes sometimes they're really quite you know I realize many of the times they're on site but but they're often quite realistic you can occasionally I catch them out because it's been designed to look so good on camera it looks better than the real thing because the colors of lighter and outside the windows which are actually inside the hangar they shine in these massive lights and everything's got this is good I'm almost blown yes that's true that's very true so we have another question on this one's from Beverly oh this is an interesting one she says that she personally loves an of Cleves but she's wondering if you have a favorite wife of Henry the eighth's brilliant question Beverley I love this question I very often find myself in the position of speaking to a group of people like yourselves and I often throw it back because I think your answer to the question of which of the wives of Henry Thea if you prefer reveals a lot about yourself people tend to vote for the ones who are most like them or that they aspire to be so personally I'm I'm a great admirer of the one he was well educated capable of bearing great responsibility was trusted by Henry the age to rule the country when he was absent fighting in France the one who showed you know was dignity in the face of adversity courage integrity was a good mother to her daughter I'm talking about Kathryn American of course but there are people who say oh no no no your magic matter well it's got to be an Berlin and I would say that you are all self-indulgent melodramatic narcissists I'm sorry don't hate me another question from patty this is another sort of asking YouTube this is going to be a tough tough one for you I think which Palace is your favorite I'm sort of contractually obliged not to say [Laughter] changes over time because we we work on different things in different years so this year we should have been celebrating the anniversary of the fields of cloth of gold we were going to have an exhibition and that was a tutor extravaganza a big party held in a field outside Calais between Henry VIII of England and France is the first of France in 1520 right it's 2020 and it was sort of a Tudor version at the Olympic Games which was another reason for doing it this year as people in the games and the exhibition was about the tournament and the relationship between the two kings and the parties and in fact we're doing one of our incubator talks about this next Thursday with my colleague Alden Gregory who was the curator of that exhibition so join us if you want to the field of gold talk but last year last year it was all about Kensington Palace because it was the the bicentenary of Queen Victoria was Queen Victoria's 200th birthday so we have to sort of roam through the centuries according to where our exhibition program takes us really and what tends to happen is that in 2014 we're in the Georgian age because it was 300 years since George that first came to the frame and what tends to happen is that they send us into a new age we think this is this is strange and then you get into it and you do the preliminary reading and then you start to you probably experienced this yourself when you move to a new research area you start to be able to make connections don't you yes this is the best this is the best topic I've ever been involved with and then you feel really sad when it's sometime say goodbye as ice I know that you are just finishing a book I think the sadness will have to come later right now it will just be elation when it's let me ask a little bit about royal myths and secrets so I want you to talk with us a bit about how you came to this as an idea for a series and also why do you think it's important that we we kind of dismantle myth that we think I'm thinking through it critically because what does that what does purpose does that serve ultimately well what I like about this series is that it's really about historiography which is not so good that you have basically allowed to use on the television the history of history the story of the way in which the telling of history has changed over time and in in Britain okay the same series is called British history's biggest and it's a very sort of tweed British words so we've called it myths Fifi's in the American version but the idea is to unpack the conventional and sort of schoolgirl narratives and try to see how ownership of the story has changed over time and been manipulated over time and although this story there hopefully there's a little bit of analysis as well which like I was saying earlier is one of the key things that you learn to do on a history degree you learn skills as well as the facts and you are able to [Music] judge analyze assess those sorts of things that everybody should be doing the whole time when they're reading a history book they shouldn't be taking it as gospel they should be thinking what's what's the viewpoints of the author what agenda do they have whose image are they trying to bolster here and Elizabeth the first is a great openness of the series because she was just such a mistress of what you might call propaganda you might more sympathetically call it brand management there's always a potential skill for a monarch brand management but you might call it propaganda you might call it myth making you might call it fibbing but there's something that we should know about mm what do you think what's the most compelling find that you you you had while doing this series in terms of uncovering myths or getting us to rethink the history of the Armada and Elizabeth the first role in that but also in the history of England in that period one thing that actually really comes to mind actually isn't from the Elizabeth episode is from the Queen Anne episode I had my personal politics changed by this because one of the achievements of Queen Anne's reign in commercial terms is the forging of the union between England and Scotland into you Great Britain now I haven't been into this whole issue before in great detail but the more I learnt about how this deal was inflicted upon the Scots the more interested I became one of the things we explored in that episode that you'll get the chance to see next sunday in America is the petitions which were created by Scottish people say please no don't do this to us and the bribe that was paid by the government in London to the Scottish establishment if you like to you know to go along with this and um there's this was a referendum in in in this country for Scotland we wanted to be independent and that's one of that referendum I've seen this but now I can see why the Scottish National Party might actually want to leave it was interesting it's funny how history can sometimes do that it can really transform the way you think about current issues even if you're not necessarily drawing a direct line to the Past you sort of understand that that how things arrive at where they get where they arrive at and you know I think we're at a moment right now in the United States where we're thinking very seriously about the the legacies of our own history and typically regarding race and other matters understanding history through that lens can be very useful sometimes um another question a couple more questions from the audience so let me go back to those Beverly asked are there any more books in the works for you yes one of the other side lines that I have sort of disgustingly prolific is as a author of historical novels the kids see my readers our girls not supposed to say that girls on walls but really the girls between 11 and 14 who are some of my favorite people in the world and I've just written one it's a new one called the Austin girls which is Jane Austen in you know because a fictional version of herself and she becomes a detective and solve a crime but then she heroine said Jane Austen's nieces because I have written previously about about Jane Austen's life through the lens of the houses in which she lived a book called Jane Austen at home like the mecca sign you know I'm a I'm a curator of house it's palaces and fancy houses and in real life I came across these two nieces of Jane Austen to whom she gave advice as they were coming onto the marriage market as teenagers themselves and as soon as I caught them I thought these are the heroines of one of my one of my novels for younger readers and the reason I do that work is because it was one of the routes by which I myself came to history I absolutely have total respect for historical novels as the thin end of the wedge because a way of getting people over the threshold and drawing into them into the of history so I really hope that one of my readers in quite a few years time not immediately will be sitting in my seat and will be the chief curator of historical fallacies not any similarities between those nieces and some of the Bennet sisters or an opinionated self-confident young lady and the echoes of her in the character of emma Woodhouse Jane Austen said that she heard she conjured up out of her head and she said so I question from Rebecca about dressing in period costume Pro period clothing she's wondering a little bit about that as a component of your presentation in royal myths and secrets but also doing some of your other other presentations and I'm actually really intrigued by then she also asked are you do you have a particular outfit that you enjoy wearing the most I love personally you're wearing of Queen Elizabeth or Queen Elizabeth style costume going through the streets of London being in a bike cap I love that I think that's just brilliant so but maybe you can you can tell us which one which one is your suspect what's behind these questions about dressing on the wrecker or the thought how did it come to this this was a good three reasons for doing it I suppose the first sister indulge my shameless narcissistic love and dressing up I've always just enjoyed it that's um the second is that when you're making a history program it costs a lot of money and generally what happens is that director of the program writes presenta appears with fifty Roman slaves wearing togas and after somebody does a calculation thinks we can't afford this I know let's put Lucy in a sheet you know just trying to paint a picture without spending too much money but the third and most serious reason for taking dress seriously if you like is this it is not fun and it is sometimes a fabulous little window into a lost world and pulled you and I were talking just before the event started about the something that's we have at Hampton Court Palace that's called the Royal ceremonial dress collection it's a collection of ten thousand pieces of costume worn by kings and queens and their courtiers and their servants and it's a brilliant resource for the mentality of people in the past so one of the strengths of the collection and this is an outfit that I'm particularly impressed and amazed by is the 18th century Court Mantua and this is the type of dress which has a very tight fit is top bar for ladies and then it spreads out enormously wide at the sides over hoops their hoops made out of whale bone action you can probably visualize the sort of thing I'm talking about not least from period dramas like the Dutch chess and it was a sort of a uniform that you had to wear at the Georgian Court as a lady and they were woven with gold and silver thread partly to sparkle by the lighted candles they're supposed to be seen in low light levels and would really have glinted and glitters in a miraculous way and partly to demonstrate your wealth so sometimes when one of these court Manchu addresses became outmoded they would melt it down to get the silver back and to make a new month and the reason for the the hoop thing is to create it really like a huge billboard saying look how rich my husband is he's bought me all the silver fabric they are all so ridiculously impractical the heavy you can't go through a door right right unless it's a palace door in which case they fit perfectly and you can't bend down you can't pick anything up you can't honey and the point is you don't need to if you're rich enough to be in one of these dresses then your job is basically to stand around looking it so Lamas there's also imprisoning that is a question I have about another thing that appears in the series and it has to do with the use of material culture the use of material artifacts in studying the past and I was especially intrigued in the Armada episode about the use of the Armada tapas trees and and how wonderful those are as historical sources so maybe you can say a little bit about how we use things like dress and tapestries and furniture and all those other things to understand the past well these tapestries have a sort of they existed and then they became a shadow version of themselves that still survives in the Palace of Westminster so just recently I don't think we got our denting it made it into the final program in the Palace of Westminster there are these numerals recreating these tapestries which have been destroyed to celebrate the victory of the Armada and the Victorians cares so much about this victory over the Armada that they thought this is the thing to celebrate in the nations in the nation's trade elastic government and just recently some of the missing manuals have been recreated by a donor so people are still thinking it's really important to be said of Armada which on one level is it's yeah sure great lovely story but on another level is it's happened a really long time ago and it didn't happen in quite the totally successful way that you think that you did I'm fascinated by that this nation building is a work in progress in Britain well in England later Britain we have to do stuff like this because I feel that we're much less well branded as a country than America is with its Constitution right it's written down in Britain he's not listen now is famously not written down now and I guess what we have in our our favor for nation building is a clergy graphical boundary and centuries of rule by one institution the monarchy sort of the rest of it is up for grabs in a way this it isn't in America that was the thing that really intrigued me about the thinking through national identity thinking through how history informs how we understand who we are as people who we are as a nation and I thought that came through really nicely in the episode and it was just a really instructive point I think for me as I as I watched and thought about it another question from Beverly so let me throw that out there she's also referencing dress and could you tell us about some of the imagery in the rainbow portraits of Elizabeth the first oh yes the may be a portrait of Elizabeth first fantastic um the rainbow that she holds kind of looks like a hosepipe she's holding this rainbow in the portrait to say I control the weather that's the symbolism there um she is the Sun she controls the whole of the universe and she's also got if you can imagine around the back of her head this huge gauzy construction hers perhaps represents Klaus but it also has the effects I think when you look at it of a rock star coming forwards in a cloud of dry ice you know that is the smoke that they blast out of smoke machine so imagine rocks are stepping onto stage with all the smoke and steam swirling around them that's what I think has sort of muslin Claus collar behind her head does and then on the portrait on the dress itself they were famously the eyes and ears that they're possibly embroidery on its little eyes little ears the weird you're thinking please need but the message is that you're Queen season hears you she's everywhere and you know that's a very important concept in the 16th century that someone's got their eye on you God also the mana for example when um Katherine Howard was giving evidence in her supposes trial I think I've got this right she said some that she didn't want to she didn't want to talk about what had happened even when Kremlin was asking her because she's worried that God would over here and give her a punishment for it so the idea that the status ominous is omniscient and omnipresent is something that the Cheetahs actively cultivated it's usually not of pearls on the portrait as well which represents the moon which represents virginity which represent purity the ring though portrait isn't the one that's in the episode that we just saw that's the Armada portrayed there's lots of the same symbolism holds the jewels that Elizabeth would have possessed for example remain in the Royal Collection well hmm you've got me on this one I don't have good knowledge of jewels some students do survive like a pearl that belonged to Mary Queen of Scots which I think was owned by Elizabeth Taylor for a while I think that there are something called Queen Elizabeth earrings or ear drops that form part of the crown jewels but you know exposing my ignorance and I think I think I remember is seeing maybe some some of Elizabeth's jewelry in the Victorian Albert in that in the British ruins that they have but I think um let me ask you a question about personality because one of the things that strikes me as you go through this episode is the forcefulness and you alluded to this before of Elizabeth's personality and the importance I think of interpersonal dynamics and interpersonal relationships in her reign um so maybe you can just tell us a little bit more about some of those relationships and which ones you found especially illuminating or especially intriguing I guess well cool with respect I might have to dispute the terms of your question here because because you will be aware that Thomas Cutler set up this idea that the history of the history of the world is the history of great men and their doings right we can include as with the first as an unerring certainty but really does the individual and their quirks have that much influence over historical events we can we can debate that we mustn't take it as as a given that personally I do think it's very important and this Elizabeth's character their intelligence was a key part of her own success just like her father's romantic nature it was very important to what happened with the Reformation he was what we would call a serial monogamist it wasn't content to have mistresses on the side if he loved a woman he wanted to marry her and hence the program and all the political two months that's happened but sometimes I think we're guilty as historians that placing the what we might read as a person's character too much at the heart of matters and another thing you've got to be careful of is judging the emotions of the past by the emotions of today so you know notions of romantic love that we might believe in for example that she doesn't recognize that no no marriage marriages is about reproduction and property and wealth I was read the most fantastic little aphorism let me see if I can get this right in Tudor times marriage began with a financial discussion it moved to the bearing of children then the third stage was falling in loving comfortable old age well as today we do it the other way around we fall in love we bear children and then we have financial discussions when the marriage falls apart controversial bitsy you've got to admit there's something in there Lucy do you want to give us a just what we only have a minute or two left here but you want to give us a preview of what you what's the what's to come in the next couple of episodes people have now seen the Armada episode love to the next one's about Queen Anne which I was particularly interested in because a lot of people would say ooh Queen Anne who's she we don't know about her but the reason we were allowed make a whole show about her is because of the film that came out called the favorite which starred Olivia Colman and it was a great success and people wanting to know who were she and she did some extraordinary things which have been overlooked partly because of her gender and partly because she was because of the physical imperfections of her body she was somebody who had weight issues there were all sorts of reasons why her achievement has been underrated and then we move on to the hate figure of French people even to this day and we've looked a little bit about how that negative judgment of her was also shaped by her being female and being a following in in France as well and how we can perhaps treat her with a little bit more sympathy from the perspective of today that's wonderful thanks I look forward to watching those so Lucie this has been an absolute pleasure to chat with you about your work and all your wonderful insights about about history I really have enjoyed it I really very much enjoyed the episode I'm speaking of the episode Lucy where's Leigh's royal myths and secrets begins this Sunday on June the 21st at 8 p.m. on Vermont PBS and then will continue for the next two Sundays beyond that and hopefully in the future we'll get a lot more of these episodes but thanks so much Lucy for joining us and thanks for chatting with me it's been a real pleasure same here you

Channel: Vermont PBS

Views: 124,937

Rating: 4.9377975 out of 5

Keywords: #LucyWorsley, #BritishHistory, #BritshMonarchy, #PBS, #RoyalMythsAndSecrets

Id: eUwwGKAEGtI

Length: 35min 37sec (2137 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 24 2020