61 Quotes by Kate Williams

I am more English than the English.- Rudolf de Vitt.

Victoria liked music full of high passion and drama. “I am a terribly modern person,” she decided.

As historians, we spend days in archives, gazing at account books. We train would-be historians in the arts of deciphering letters and documents, early Latin, scribal handwriting, medieval French.

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.

Over the years to come, one thing is for certain: if the monarchy wishes to stay relevant and in power, it will have to change more.

The 19th century became the age of the museum. Objects were scrambled for, specimens seized, and friezes and antiques grasped.

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.

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

One of Britain's big problems throughout history has been that we lust after consumer goods from elsewhere, but our friends overseas have been less enthusiastic about buying things we produce.