Top 40 Kate Williams Quotes

The 19th century became the age of the museum. Objects were scrambled for, specimens seized, and friezes and antiques grasped.

One child is never enough for a monarch.

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.

I’m fascinated by historical fashion, and I like to live in the past slightly. If I could walk around all day dressed in a crinoline, I would.

I love wearing green, and I like grey and black, but I don’t think they really suit me.

Throughout history, the only way to secure a throne has been with a phalanx of children – nine for Victoria, 13 for George III.

Redheads were particularly persecuted during the European witch trials of the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The colour was associated with the devil, and the pale skin which most redheads have was thought unnatural and deathly.

Throughout the 19th century, Britain bought cheaply from the countries of the empire and compelled subject countries to buy our goods at high prices.

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.

I’ve written extensively on Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth and seen up close how those women, who were born when the country hoped for a male heir, made their way as leaders.

I am part of a team organising an Emma Hamilton exhibition for the National Maritime Museum for 2016, and the amount of planning is a revelation – borrowing from museums and collections all over the world.

One of Britain’s big problems throughout history has been that we lust after consumer goods from elsewhere, but our friends overseas have been less enthusiastic about buying things we produce.

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.

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.

I receive many letters from people hoping to research their own houses.

My Welsh grandmother Mair didn’t meet my grandfather until she was 28, quite old to be unmarried in the early ’40s.

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.

I wouldn’t mind an original letter from Napoleon to Josephine – in the early days, his letters arrived torn to pieces because he was overwhelmed by his passion for her.

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.

Precise historical reasons are difficult to pinpoint, but red hair, it seems, bestows a sense of otherness. Red is the colour of blood and danger.

The British Museum was our first real museum, the property of the public rather than the monarch or the church.

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.’

As an older child, I was a huge ‘Anne Of Green Gables’ fan.

Queens perhaps perform better in the role of monarch because they never take their position for granted. Many kings have failed because they believed that the public would love them whatever they did. Queens knew better.

I’ve always considered myself to look like a rather plain-and-exhausted bluestocking, so it’s rather odd to read Tweets commenting on my appearance.

Eighteenth-century matrons would have never have dreamed of appointing a redhaired wet nurse for their precious offspring – redheads passed on their horrible characters through their milk.

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 like boxes because of the secrets they hide.

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.

The modern museum has multiple purposes – to curate and preserve, to research, and to reach out to the public. They challenge us and ask us to question our assumptions about the past or the world around us.

I think increasingly we want to read the history that wasn’t written by the victors.

Women’s stories have been neglected for so long – unless they were queens. Exploring the history of women is a way of redressing that imbalance.

I chose my house because I loved the fact that there was a really busy road with lots of things to stare at.

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.

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.

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.

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 wonder if there’ll ever be a time where you’re not judged by your appearance. It seems that wherever you’ve got to, your appearance is always discussed. It’s never said about men. We talk about a man’s charisma, not his looks.

Indeed, throughout much of history and in many cultures, redheads have been viewed with suspicion and fear – and even killed – because of their hair.