141 Quotes by Lucy Worsley

Yes, if you lace your corset up as snugly as is humanly possible, it will undoubtedly impede your breathing and make you more likely to faint. But it's not certain that Victorian women really did that on a regular basis.

Dorothy L. Sayers is absolutely my favorite The reason she stands above Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, and Margery Allingham is because she was so subtly aware of the lot and trials of women of her decade.

A Georgian man's shirt had a long tail, which he tucked between his legs rather like a nappy. Over it went his 'breech liners', the long, linen forerunners of drawers. All of this was intended to keep his unwashable outer clothes free from the sweat and stink of his skin.

To wear stays forces you into the elegant, balletic posture of a Georgian minuet-dancer. As with the tight-lacing, there is still great debate about whether stay-wearing, which began in adolescence, actually changed the shape of the skeleton, or was just a cosmetic, temporary, alteration.

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.

As a child I ate all sorts of veg because my mother was a hippie and grew them all and made our clothes.

Sales of corsets doubled between 1948 and 1958, possibly as part of the process of putting women back into the box, as they gave up the jobs and freedoms that came during wartime.

I think you can be happy every day, if you are in the flow.

It's our job as curators to open up Hampton Court to visitors, and to look after the buildings and collections for the future.