Dr Lucy Worsley is Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces, the charity which looks after the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, Kensington Palace, the Banqueting House in Whitehall and Kew Palace in Kew Gardens. (Yes, this is a fabulous job, but no, you can't have it. Bribes have been offered, and refused.)
Her first paid employment after studying history at Oxford was at a minor stately home called Milton Manor, near Abingdon, where she fed the llamas. After that she became an Inspector of Ancient Monuments at English Heritage, doing historical research at Bolsover Castle in Derbyshire. There she became obsessed with William Cavendish, the arch-Royalist Duke who built the castle and lost a vital battle in the English Civil War (he was having a smoke in his coach at the very moment Oliver Cromwell and the Roundheads charged). Lucy's biography of William Cavendish, Cavalier, a Tale of Chivalry, Passion and Great Houses, was published in 2007.
Lucy very much enjoys showing off on television, and will be presenting 'King Alfred ... the Great?' on BBC1 South, 17 May 2010, 7.30pm. She's also a winner of the Royal Historical Society's Frampton Prize, a visiting professor at Kingston University, and one of the few beardless Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries.
Her next book, Courtiers, A Secret History of Kensington Palace, is inspired by a staircase at Kensington Palace. It was painted in the 1720s by William Kent with 45 portraits of servants at the Georgian court, and gives a worm's-eye view of all the shenanigans going on in the royal household. Courtiers will be published in the UK on 6 May 2010.
Do please drop by at www.lucyworsley.com
