Quotes from Kate Williams

Visit any bookshop in Europe, and the shelves are filled with English novels and non-fiction books in translation - while British bookshops stock mainly English and American works.

It's the 21st century. It's untenable to suggest that women had no significance and no interest and that just because they didn't vote they had no relevance to the course of our history.

I love wearing green, and I like grey and black, but I don't think they really suit me.

Usually, historical revelations come from days of legwork, ploughing through piles of letters and papers in archives or even private homes, looking for the telling phrase or letter that someone else has missed.

Unless I'm asked to dress up in a costume, TV shows prefer a clean, modern look, so I've developed a wardrobe full of plain, bright colours. If it's an outdoors job, I just wear big jumpers.

Between 1945 and 1965, the number of colonial people ruled by the British monarch plunged from 700 million to five million. In 1956, just three years after the coronation, the Suez canal crisis and Anthony Eden's humiliation ended all notions that Britain was a world superpower.

I am part of a team organising an Emma Hamilton exhibition for the National Maritime Museum for 2016, and the amount of planning is a revelation - borrowing from museums and collections all over the world.

She knew that doting on the dream made the pain worse, but she could not stop herself.

In this grave hour, perhaps the most fateful in our history, I send to every household of my peoples, both at home and overseas, this message, spoken with the same depth of feeling for each one of you as if I were able to cross your threshold and speak to you myself.

I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great Imperial family to which we all belong, but I shall not have the strength to carry out this resolution alone unless you join in it with me, as I now invite you to do. I know that your support will be unfailingly given. God help me to make good my vow and God bless all of you who are willing to share in it.   The

I care only for the people who are useful to me—and only so long as they are useful," he said on St. Helena.

It was a matter of making the best job you can . . . and accepting your fate.

Colour is really important to me when buying clothes. I wear a lot of fitted jackets, and because I'm small, I avoid long skirts and coats. And I hate wearing hats.

Britain's passion for Christmas and huge white weddings dates from Victorian times - both were low-key celebrations before Victoria and her PR machine.

My Welsh grandmother Mair didn't meet my grandfather until she was 28, quite old to be unmarried in the early '40s.

Eighteenth-century matrons would have never have dreamed of appointing a redhaired wet nurse for their precious offspring - redheads passed on their horrible characters through their milk.

Some archives and record offices are housed in your local museum or library; others have their own stand-alone building. Wherever they are, they are a treasure trove.

I wonder if there'll ever be a time where you're not judged by your appearance. It seems that wherever you've got to, your appearance is always discussed. It's never said about men. We talk about a man's charisma, not his looks.

Throughout the 19th century, Britain bought cheaply from the countries of the empire and compelled subject countries to buy our goods at high prices.

Now I would go to London's Pudding Lane on 2 September 1666 and put out that little fire. I'd love to investigate the histories of a few of the buildings that burned for Restoration Home.

The modern museum has multiple purposes - to curate and preserve, to research, and to reach out to the public. They challenge us and ask us to question our assumptions about the past or the world around us.

Women's stories have been neglected for so long - unless they were queens. Exploring the history of women is a way of redressing that imbalance.

People are not happy with women in actual power, yet we seem to be happy to take women on as figureheads, objects, like queens. It's a powerful yet politically powerless role.

Queens perhaps perform better in the role of monarch because they never take their position for granted. Many kings have failed because they believed that the public would love them whatever they did. Queens knew better.