Quotes from Lucy Worsley

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 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.

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'.

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.

Two hundred years ago, bathrooms didn't exist. The bathroom's development has not been a straightforward matter, and you might be surprised to learn that many Tudor people had worse personal hygiene than their medieval ancestors.

Being a historian, if only for the day, teaches you useful things like judgment, and the ability to detect when someone is lying to you.

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.

People often misuse the term 'Regency' to describe art or antiques dating from a vague period between the 1790s and the 1830s, but technically the period only lasted between 1811 and 1820.

Lots of items that survive from the past are high-status, valuable things that people have treasured.

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.

Regency buildings are often said to lack the serenity of their early Georgian predecessors, or the intense scholarship of the subsequent Gothic revival.

As a curator, I've met endless people who feel a 'special connection' with Anne Boleyn, or Victorian prostitutes, or various other unlikely candidates.

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.

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.

History was the subject that didn't seem like work. It was enjoyable. That's why I was drawn to doing it really.

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.

If you lived in 18th-century England, you probably lived in a village, worked on the land, and your greatest fears were probably dying in a famine or of disease or in a war.