Lucy Worsley

Dr Lucy Worsley OBE is an historian and a compelling keynote speaker. She brings history vividly to life with intelligence, wit, and a distinctive storytelling style. As a renowned historian, author, and broadcaster, Lucy Worsley is best known for making complex historical narratives accessible, engaging, and relevant to modern audiences. She served as Chief Curator, Historic Royal Palaces for twenty-one years, from 2003 to 2021.

Historic Royal Palaces is the independent charity that welcomes more than three million visitors annually to the unoccupied royal palaces of London. These include the Tower of London, London’s iconic citadel castle and World Heritage Site, as well as Kensington Palace State Apartments and Hampton Court Palace, all sites of enormous importance in London’s visitor economy.

Lucy graduated from New College, Oxford with a first-class honours BA degree in Ancient and Modern History, and in 2001 she was awarded a PHD from the University of Sussex. Her first paid employment after studying history at Oxford was at a minor stately home called Milton Manor, near Abingdon, where she fed the llamas! After that she became an Inspector of Ancient Monuments at English Heritage, did historical research at Bolsover Castle in Derbyshire, and wrote her first book, Cavalier, about a dissolute Royalist duke.

Her work as a curator at Kensington Palace led to her book Courtiers, which was followed by If Walls Could Talk, A Very British Murder, and her first historical novel for young readers, Eliza Rose, set at the Tudor court.

Lucy has presented many shows for television including: Lucy Worsley: Elizabeth I’s Battle for God’s Music (BBC 4), Lucy Worsley’s Nights at the Opera (BBC 2), Jane Austen: Behind Closed Doors (BBC 2), British History’s Biggest Fibs with Lucy Worsley (BBC 4), Six Wives With Lucy Worsley (BBC 1), Lucy Worsley: Mozart’s London Odyssey (BBC 4), The Real Versailles (BBC 2), Empire of the Tsars: Romanov Russia with Lucy Worsley (BBC 4) and many more. Lucy won the BAFTA for Specialist Factual for the documentary Suffragettes with Lucy Worsley in 2019.

Audiences can expect a keynote delivery from Lucy Worsley that is intellectually stimulating, entertaining, and thought-provoking.She doesn’t just recount history, she reanimates it, challenging listeners to rethink assumptions and to see the present through the lens of the past. She was awarded an OBE in 2018 for services to history and heritage. Lucy Worsley is added to our roster in response to a client request for speakers on the built heritage environment.