Audiobooks by Lucy Worsley

Encounters with Victoria: Queen Victoria's Reign Through Significant Meetings

Lucy Worsley presents a ten-part BBC radio exploration of Queen Victoria’s reign via notable encounters In this revealing series, acclaimed historian and Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces, Lucy Worsley, explores the reign of Queen Victoria through pivotal figures in her life. We meet ten key individuals – some well known, others less so – and find out how they influenced the Queen, what she thought of them: and what they thought of her. Beginning with Victoria’s Prime Minister and closest advisor, Lord Melbourne, Worsley goes on to introduce us to the Queen’s lady-in-waiting, Lady Flora Hastings; the Mayor of Newport, Thomas Phillips, governess Louise Lehzen and two popular American entertainers, Tom Thumb and Buffalo Bill – as well as dresser Frieda Arnold; celebrity nurse Florence Nightingale; royal ‘favourite’ Abdul Karim and Bishop Randall Davidson. There are also encounters of a different kind, as Lucy Worsley chronicles Victoria’s grief at the death of her husband, Prince Albert, and records Victoria’s own final days and the crowd of people who gathered as Britain’s longest-reigning monarch breathed her last. Travelling from Kensington Palace to a luxury hotel on the Côte d’Azur, Worsley talks to eminent writers and historians and draws on letters and diaries including the Queen’s own journal to provide fascinating insight into Victoria’s world and those who helped shape it. 1 Accession Day and Kinky Lord M – 1837 With historian Philip Ziegler 2 Poor Lady Flora – 1839 With historian Kathryn Hughes 3 A Wounded Welshman – 9 December 1839 With historians Les James, Rhian E. Jones and curator Oliver Blackmore 4 The Governess – 3 September 1842 With Historic Royal Palaces curator Claudia Williams 5 American Idols – 1844 and 1887 With historian Helen Davies and V&A curator and writer Nicholas Rankin 6 The Dresser – Frieda Arnold, 1854 With Beatrice Behlen, Senior Curator at the Museum of London and Joanna Marschner, Senior Curator at Historic Royal Palaces, Kensington Palace 7 A Nightingale at Balmoral – Florence Nightingale – September 1856 With historian Mark Bostridge 8 An Encounter with Death – 13 December 1861 With historian Helen Rappaport 9 Mutiny Against an Indian – 1897 With historians Priya Atwal and Shrabani Basu 10 The Sinking of a Great Ship – Bishop Randall Davidson – 25th January 1901 With writer and historian A.N. Wilson Extracts from Queen Victoria’s Journals by Gracious Permission of Her Majesty The Queen

Lucy Worsley (Author), Full Cast, Lucy Worsley (Narrator)

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My Name Is Victoria

Miss V. Conroy is good at keeping secrets. She likes to sit as quiet as a mouse, neat and discreet. But when her father sends her to Kensington Palace to become the companion to Princess Victoria, Miss V soon finds that she can no longer remain in the shadows. Miss V's father, Sir John Conroy, confidant and financial advisor to Victoria's mother, has devised a strict set of rules for the young princess, which he calls the Kensington System. It governs her behavior and keeps her locked away from the world. He says it is for the princess's safety, but Victoria herself is convinced that it is to keep her lonely and unhappy. Torn between loyalty to her father and her growing friendship with the willful and passionate princess, Miss V has a decision to make: to continue in silence or to speak out. By turns thrilling, dramatic, and touching, this is the story of Queen Victoria's childhood as you've never heard it before.

Lucy Worsley (Author), Henrietta Meire (Narrator)

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Jane Austen at Home: A Biography

"Jane Austen at Home offers a fascinating look at Jane Austen's world through the lens of the homes in which she lived and worked throughout her life. The result is a refreshingly unique perspective on Austen and her work and a beautifully nuanced exploration of gender, creativity, and domesticity."--Amanda Foreman, bestselling author of Georgianna, Duchess of Devonshire Take a trip back to Jane Austen's world and the many places she lived as historian Lucy Worsley visits Austen's childhood home, her schools, her holiday accommodations, the houses--both grand and small--of the relations upon whom she was dependent, and the home she shared with her mother and sister towards the end of her life. In places like Steventon Parsonage, Godmersham Park, Chawton House and a small rented house in Winchester, Worsley discovers a Jane Austen very different from the one who famously lived a 'life without incident'. Worsley examines the rooms, spaces and possessions which mattered to her, and the varying ways in which homes are used in her novels as both places of pleasure and as prisons. She shows readers a passionate Jane Austen who fought for her freedom, a woman who had at least five marriage prospects, but--in the end--a woman who refused to settle for anything less than Mr. Darcy. Illustrated with two sections of color plates, Lucy Worsley's Jane Austen at Home is a richly entertaining and illuminating new audiobook about one of the world's favorite novelists and one of the subjects she returned to over and over in her unforgettable novels: home.

Lucy Worsley (Author), Lucy Worsley, Ruth Redman (Narrator)

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Maid of the King's Court

In the vibrant, volatile court of Henry VIII, can even the most willful young woman direct her own fate and follow her heart in a world ruled by powerful men?Clever, headstrong Elizabeth Rose Camperdowne knows her duty. As the sole heiress to an old but impoverished noble family, Eliza must marry a man of wealth and title—it’s the only fate for a girl of her standing. But when a surprising turn of events lands her in the royal court as a maid of honor to Anne of Cleves, Eliza is drawn into the dizzying, dangerous orbit of Henry the Eighth and struggles to distinguish friend from foe. Is her glamorous flirt of a cousin, Katherine Howard, an ally in this deceptive place, or is she Eliza’s worst enemy? And then there’s Ned Barsby, the king’s handsome page, who is entirely unsuitable for Eliza but impossible to ignore. British historian Lucy Worsley provides a vivid, romantic glimpse of the treachery, tragedy, and thrills of life in the Tudor court.

Lucy Worsley (Author), Elizabeth Knowelden (Narrator)

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The Art of the English Murder: From Jack the Ripper and Sherlock Holmes to Agatha Christie and Alfre

Murder: a dark, shameful deed, the last resort of the desperate or a vile tool of the greedy—and a very strange, very English obsession. But where did this fixation develop? And what does it tell us about ourselves? In The Art of the English Murder, Lucy Worsley explores this phenomenon in forensic detail, revisiting notorious crimes like the Ratcliff Highway Murders, which caused a nationwide panic in the early nineteenth century, and the case of Frederick and Maria Manning, the suburban couple who were hanged after killing Maria's lover and burying him under their kitchen floor. Our fascination with crimes like these became a form of national entertainment, inspiring novels and plays, prose and paintings, poetry and true-crime journalism. The Art of the English Murder is a unique exploration of the art of crime—and a riveting investigation into the English criminal soul.

Lucy Worsley (Author), Anne Flosnik (Narrator)

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If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home

Why did the flushing toilet take two centuries to catch on? Why did medieval people sleep sitting up? When were the two "dirty centuries?" Why did gas lighting cause Victorian ladies to faint? Why, for centuries, did rich people fear fruit? In her brilliantly and creatively researched book, Lucy Worsley takes us through the bedroom, bathroom, living room, and kitchen. She covers the history of each room and explores what people actually did in bed, in the bath, at the table, and at the stove-from sauce stirring to breastfeeding, teeth cleaning to masturbation, getting dressed to getting married-providing a compelling account of how the four rooms of the home have evolved from medieval times to today.

Lucy Worsley (Author), Anne Flosnik (Narrator)

Audiobook