Top 95 Quotes & Sayings by Lucy Worsley
Explore popular quotes and sayings by Lucy Worsley.
Last updated on September 18, 2024.
Mum encouraged my love of history. She was always dragging me off to visit historic properties, and then I reached an age when I suddenly appreciated it. We have a big overlap in interests and often work together.
I think you can be happy every day, if you are in the flow.
I see it as my job to try to make history to be a popular thing. The longer I keep going the less weird it will be to be a female historian.
My job is basically organising things, putting labels on them and keeping them straight!
My favorite thing is talking to people about history - that's what I like doing. The sort of history I do isn't just for professional historians.
I am quite old-fashioned: I wouldn't consciously think 'I am going to dress up in a sexy manner' because it's just not me. I like to look cheeky, friendly and approachable, and I wear bright colours, like a clown.
I have a cup of tea in my hand at all times. I have about 10 a day. I don't go for this hipster coffee nonsense. No flat whites for me!
It's very hard for me to find any other job that I would ever want to do because I love the one I have so much.
One thing that does seem to particularly annoy people is my voice and my very slight, to me unnoticeable, speech impediment.
One thing I know, and any female presenters will know this, is don't reveal any body part or bend over because freaks will freeze-frame it and put it on their nasty messageboards.
I see bundling as a really important step in the journey toward marriage becoming a marriage of personal choice, rather than something you're just forced into by your parents for economic reasons, because you don't have to marry the man or woman after the night of bundling.
I don't see any distinction between work and pleasure so I do spend a lot of what other people might consider my leisure time doing history things.
My parents weren't keen on me watching television when I was growing up, in the 70s and 80s, which is ironic given that I've ended up working in it.
Curating isn't just a matter of taste. It involves building up real knowledge of the items in your care. As the world gets quicker, and shallower, and bite-sized, retaining our ability to take a deep dive into history is more and more important.
I like all the types of supposed work that I do. It's a privilege: I can't believe I get paid for it.
As a child I ate all sorts of veg because my mother was a hippie and grew them all and made our clothes.
As a child, my parents' attitude rubbed off on me; I have an old teenage diary that marks the moment when my parents decided to buy a colour television. I was very much against it and wrote that it was a waste of money.
You would think that the weapons of a king and queen were perhaps their armies or centuries of tradition but what they have is the power of the media. The visual is almost more important than words because they don't have that many opportunities to speak.
My father is a geologist and he really thinks that scientists are going to save the world, so he wanted me to be one.
My parents divorced when I was in my early 20s and have both happily remarried, so I have a large extended family.
I wish I could spend my money with more pleasure, but I was one of those kids who squirrelled away my pocket money.
When I was little, all I really wanted out of my life was to become Nancy Drew. I've always enjoyed fictional sleuths, especially Nancy.
I want to look like I'm friendly, approachable and jolly.
Yes, if you lace your corset up as snugly as is humanly possible, it will undoubtedly impede your breathing and make you more likely to faint. But it's not certain that Victorian women really did that on a regular basis.
Only in the nineteenth century, with the improvements to the water supply forced by the fear of cholera, and with the building of underground sewers, did the flushing toilet finally take its place in most homes.
My favourite accessory is a pair of long purple leather gloves.
My dad, a geologist, was an expert in glaciers and permafrost, so we moved to a lot of cold places such as Canada, Iceland and Norway.
I'm very interested in Queen Victoria's younger years at Kensington Palace. She was born in the dining room because it had stairs down to hot water in the kitchen.
My own office life at Hampton Court is somewhat challenging food-wise. It's miles from anywhere, off the Chapel Court, deep inside the palace, up a spiral staircase of 51 steps. You can't just nip out for a sandwich.
My ideal viewer is an 11-year-old girl who, like me, was once reading a book by Jean Plaidy and might be in the position of deciding what to make of the world and what to do with her life.
I've most liked dressing up as a flapper. I've been flappered twice. But I care not only about the clothes they wore but what they stood for. It's early-liberated, earning money, having the vote, their potential husband probably died in the war, that kind of independence.
I'd like to meet Mrs Cornwallis, who made Henry VIII's black puddings.
I am a museum curator when I am not on the television and in our collection at Kensington Palace we have a book like Marie Antoinette's, which belonged to the daughters of George III.
I am interested in constitutional history, political history, the history of foreign affairs, but I think you can get at those subjects through the details of daily life.
Lots of historians are sniffy about re-enactors.
Working in a museum has given me a connection to people - to the rest of humanity - that I never had before.
My dad wanted me to be a scientist and I was set to study science A-levels. But after the first term I realised it would be much more enjoyable to study English and history, which didn't seem like work - so I switched.
If you read Victorian manuals, they're crazy - the amount of attention they devote to the perfect making of the bed, the cleanliness of the bed, the hygiene of the bed.
You shouldn't hate your body parts. I have lovely little ears and eyelashes so long they sometimes get tangled in the machinery when I have my eyes tested.
Everything is different about the world of the past, including the way we think and move, and you get a sense of that through the clothing.
In big museums, the role of the curator has shrunk in recent years as different branches of curatorial work - such as interpretation, or learning, or conservation - have split off and become professions of their own.
What truly gives me joy is when I get a letter from a young woman who says they saw a programme, then read a book, then went to an evening class, and then studied a history degree at the Open University - and now I want your job.
Lots of items that survive from the past are high-status, valuable things that people have treasured.
I like to wear clothes that have some kind of relationship with the past.
The invention of the camera enabled the reinvention of the British monarchy for the modern era.
From creating a new sovereign to affairs of the heart, majestic moments to everyday life, when monarchy wants to send a message it uses a photograph.
Historic Royal Palaces is an independent charity without funding from the royal family or the government. But I have met the Queen, she comes to open projects, and she is always very interested.
As with the Trojans or the Tudors, there are many evergreen stories that we come back to again and again. I think history documentaries are as much about the present as they are the past.
As I am straight up and down, I make a good flapper. One of the highlights of my life was dancing the Charleston with Len Goodman in a nightclub in a cream, Twenties-style dress; it was the nearest I'll ever get to appearing on 'Strictly'.
There's a big mistake that people make with history, which is to think that people in the past were just like us, but wearing crinolines. They lived in different worlds.
I might once have had a pair of jeans briefly in my teenage years before I realised they weren't for me. I don't love my legs but, hey, they're mine, so I accept them.
The role of photography in crisis and recovery is fascinating, a dance between providing access and destroying the magic and mystique of the monarchy.
I'd prefer to cook for friends at home than go to a restaurant. My mum is a feeder and I get it from her - I know when I visit her there will be three different types of home-made cake waiting for me.
But the BBC has made a big push to get women historians such as Amanda Vickery, Mary Beard and Bettany Hughes on TV and they have to be given credit for that. I am lucky to be a part of that.
I have many pairs of long gloves because my wrists get cold as I also like coats with short sleeves - what Jackie O would have called bracelet-length sleeves.
My first time skiing was in Vail, Colorado. It was brilliant fun until I whacked myself in the face with my ski pole.
When it comes to history I am shameless. I will do whatever it takes to get people involved.
I've always being interested in clothes - and I'm also the curator of a significant dress collection with 12,000 objects in it - the Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection at Kensington Palace.
A lot of people would say history is important because it helps us to predict the future. I don't think that it does particularly. What it really teaches you is that things have not always been the same, and they don't have to be the way they are.
I don't want to be definitive or the last word on anything.
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