Lucy Worsley

“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.”

“One thing that does seem to particularly annoy people is my voice and my very slight, to me unnoticeable, speech impediment.”

“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 wish I could spend my money with more pleasure, but I was one of those kids who squirrelled away my pocket money.”

“The invention of the camera enabled the reinvention of the British monarchy for the modern era.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The role of photography in crisis and recovery is fascinating, a dance between providing access and destroying the magic and mystique of the monarchy.”

“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.”