Kate Williams Quotes
-
Britain's passion for Christmas and huge white weddings dates from Victorian times - both were low-key celebrations before Victoria and her PR machine.
-
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.
-
I receive many letters from people hoping to research their own houses.
-
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.
-
One woman came up to me at a lecture and observed that I was much fatter than on television; I think I look better onscreen than in real life. It's the lights.
-
Usually, historical revelations come from days of legwork, ploughing through piles of letters and papers in archives or even private homes, looking for the telling phrase or letter that someone else has missed.
-
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.
-
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.
-
I chose my house because I loved the fact that there was a really busy road with lots of things to stare at.
-
Now I would go to London's Pudding Lane on 2 September 1666 and put out that little fire. I'd love to investigate the histories of a few of the buildings that burned for Restoration Home.
-
Unless I'm asked to dress up in a costume, TV shows prefer a clean, modern look, so I've developed a wardrobe full of plain, bright colours. If it's an outdoors job, I just wear big jumpers.
-
Some archives and record offices are housed in your local museum or library; others have their own stand-alone building. Wherever they are, they are a treasure trove.
-
The centuries-old habit of privileging the male heir arose because monarchs were supposed to lead their country in battle, and only men were thought strong enough to do so.
-
The motivations of kings in British history can generally be reduced to two: the quest for territory and the search for a male heir. No king was secure on his throne until he had a son, and no queen consort was ever really safe without a boy.
-
Still often interventionist, convinced of our importance in the world, even those of us born long after 1900 live in a country that is much more Victorian than we think.
-
Analysis of soil, grave goods and skeletons has been key to our understanding of archaeology and the migration of peoples, as well as their daily lives. But in mainstream history, we tend to stick to documents.
-
Visit any bookshop in Europe, and the shelves are filled with English novels and non-fiction books in translation - while British bookshops stock mainly English and American works.
-
I think increasingly we want to read the history that wasn't written by the victors.
-
I really enjoy watching TV; it offers an amazing window, and its an incredible way of presenting history to young people in particular.
-
When I was a child, one of my first games was a time machine which I made for my brother - a big box covered in silver and bits of cellophane. I'd close him up in it and joggle him and say, 'We're in Victorian times now... and now we're in Egyptian times, and I can see all these pyramids and pharaohs.'
-
British passion for Chinese tea was unstoppable, but the Chinese had no desire for our offerings, however much we tried to sell them woolen clothes or cutlery.
-
Colour is really important to me when buying clothes. I wear a lot of fitted jackets, and because I'm small, I avoid long skirts and coats. And I hate wearing hats.
-
People are not happy with women in actual power, yet we seem to be happy to take women on as figureheads, objects, like queens. It's a powerful yet politically powerless role.