141 Quotes by Lucy Worsley

My parents divorced when I was in my early 20s and have both happily remarried, so I have a large extended family.

Medieval and Tudor people didn't treat buildings as a semi-disposable resource like we do.

My dad wanted me to be a scientist and I was set to study science A-levels. But after the first term I realised it would be much more enjoyable to study English and history, which didn't seem like work - so I switched.

Today's builders and town planners believe people inhabit 'places'. Yet medieval towns were perfect examples of what planners seek: densely populated, walkable communities in which people ate local, seasonal food, and rich and poor lived in close proximity.

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 grand sweep of constitutional or political history is important, but a detailed history of daily life also gives you a wonderful insight into the strange mental worlds of people in the past.

Medieval people didn't have special rooms for sleeping, just a single living space for everything. They put up with this lack of privacy partly for the lack of other options.

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.

Only in the nineteenth century, with the improvements to the water supply forced by the fear of cholera, and with the building of underground sewers, did the flushing toilet finally take its place in most homes.