One third of London’s inhabitants live without sufficient food or shelter. ibid.
Tasmania – the empire’s first juvenile prison. By the end of the 19th century over 160,000 British convicts are deported to Australia. 15,000 are children under sixteen. ibid.
Charles Dickens writes about the city’s underclass. ibid.
Butler enters crime-ridden slums to challenge a form of exploitation common in Victorian cities – child prostitution. ibid.
Electricity will change Britain for ever. ibid.
Queen Elizabeth I, conqueror of the Spanish Armada, Tudor defender of the Protestant faith, the headstrong virgin queen who refuses to marry. But of all her challenges, her most gruelling battle is with another woman – her own cousin – Mary Queen of Scots. Elizabeth will not face a more relentless threat to her Crown or her life. Bloody Queens: Elizabeth & Mary, BBC 2016
Elizabeth may despise Darnley but she never sends a single soldier to defend her cousin. ibid.
Elizabeth can’t bring herself to condemn Mary. Instead, she turns her rage on the young plotters. ibid.
After nineteen years of confinement, Mary is suddenly told that she will die the next morning at Fotheringay Castle February 8th 1587. ibid.
I am come among you as you see at this time not for my recreation and disport but being resolved in the midst and the heat of battle to live and die amongst you all. To lay down for my God and for my kingdom and for my people my honour and my blood even in the dust. I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman but I have the heart and the stomach of a king, and a king of England too; and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm. Elizabeth I, Tilbury Docks
Holland had conquered England without a shot being fired. Monarchy by David Starkey s3e1: Return of the King, Channel 4 2006
William and Mary would be joint King and Queen – a sort of double monarchy unique in the history of England ... William and Mary were formally offered the crown. ibid.
William of Orange was Dutch rather than Norman ... The Dutch conquest of 1688 would also have profound consequences, and not just for England but arguably for the whole of the rest of the world. For the revolution in government that it ushered in transformed England from a feeble imitator of the French absolute monarchy ... The Dutch conquest invented a modern England, a modern monarchy, perhaps even modernity itself. Monarchy by David Starkey s3e2: The Glorious Revolution
James had done something that many people thought had made him ineligible to the kingship of Protestant England: he converted to Catholicism. There were attempts in Parliament to have him excluded from the succession. But the protests had died away. The climate had changed. ibid.
The Tories now supported a Catholic king. ibid.
James II was England’s first Catholic king for over a hundred and fifty years. ibid.
An Act of Parliament called the Test Act forbade the employment of Catholics in any public post including the army. ibid.
What William did believe in was pre-destination. Monarchy by David Starkey s3e3: Rule Britannia
William’s parliament was united in its determination to drive a hard bargain with the King. ibid.
For all his military successes in Europe, William was deeply unpopular in England. ibid.
But the English parliament was determined not to have a Catholic. So in 1701 they passed the Act of Settlement which handed the succession to Sophia of Hanover and her eldest son George. They were an improbable fiftieth and fifty-first in succession ... It was now the Scots’ turn ... Each parliament now appointed a set of commissioners to try to thrash out an agreement in London ... On 16th January 1707, after three months of clause by clause debate, the Scottish parliament voted decisively. ibid.
King George III: who was only just recovering from his first bout of madness. Monarchy by David Starkey s3e5: Survival
Monarchy is the supreme embodiment of history and tradition. ibid.
At the time of his collapse [George III] the Prince of Wales ... was already 48, under the combined influences of drinks, drugs, like the opium compound Laudanum ... He spent gigantically too. ibid.
The Tories tried to form a government and Victoria wrecked their chances. ibid.
This left Albert a free hand to shape his own vision of monarchy. He arrived in a Britain transformed by the Reform Act. ibid.
The story of our past is open to interpretation and much of British history is a carefully edited and even deceitful version of events. British History’s Biggest Fibs with Lucy Worsley I: The Wars of the Roses, BBC 2017
I’ll find out how the Wars of the Roses was invented by the Tudors to justify their power. ibid.
This family tree reveals Henry’s dirty secret: the fact that his claim to the throne was decidedly dodgy. ibid.
Tudor historians onwards went to town: Richard III was said to be malicious, wrathful and envious as a king; he was also a lump of foul deformity. ibid.
In the 17th century British MPs joined forces with a Dutch prince to spin a foreign invasion into a story of liberation. British History’s Biggest Fibs with Lucy Worsley II
James II is the villain in this carefully constructed tale. ibid.
William was James II’s nephew; but more importantly his wife really was a Stuart. ibid.
Who was really controlling the narrative here? ibid.
William was carpet-bombing England with his manifesto. ibid.
She and William were offered a joint monarchy. ibid.
The problem for James II was that he converted to Catholicism. Lucy Worsley, Fit to Rule: How Royal Illness Changed History II: Bad Blood: Stuarts to Hanoverians, BBC 2013
William arrived with an army ... The Glorious Revolution. ibid.
Anne: all of her children had died ... The last in her line. ibid.
The Act of Settlement: ‘a papist should be excluded’. ibid.
George III: he did rule for sixty years. ibid.
George IV: obituary in The Times newspaper had this to say: ‘There never was an individual regretted less by his fellow creatures than this diseased king. What eye has wept for him?’ ibid.
This was to be the first royal birth in twenty-one years since Charlotte’s own. The whole future of the Hanoverian dynasty rested on this baby. Lucy Worsley, Fit to Rule: How Royal Illness Changes History: Happy Families III
Charlotte’s death was a national catastrophe. ibid.
Victoria was kept under constant surveillance. ibid.
A personality that was wilful and imperious. ibid.
Albert died at Windsor Castle – he was just forty-two. ibid.
Edward was a reluctant king ... He inherited less power than ever before. ibid.
When was Britain at its most elegant and most decadent, its most stylish and most radical? Lucy Worsley, Elegance and Decadence: The Age of the Regency 1/3, BBC 2011
George really set the tone of the age and he was a notoriously extravagant character. ibid.
George grew increasingly wayward and resentful. ibid.
There was even an illegal marriage – to a Mrs Fitzherbert, a Catholic no less. ibid.
Amelia was the favourite of her father George III. ibid.
It was this sickly girl who was responsible for the birth of the Regency. ibid.
People called him [George IV] the Grand Entertainment. ibid.
The Regency was an age in which art and culture mattered. ibid.
As the Regency was getting started Napoleon was at the height of his powers. ibid.
A beautifully tied cravat was the most important part of the dandy’s uniform. ibid.
Syphilis was rife and would eventually claim [Beau] Brummell himself. ibid.
George meanwhile was left with a Bonaparte obsession from which he never really recovered. ibid.
Imagine Britain in the middle of the Napoleonic wars. We had been fighting the French for years. Napoleon tightens his grip on Europe. Lucy Worsley, Elegance and Decadence: The Age of the Regency 2/3
In 1815 the final struggle: the Battle of Waterloo was a decisive victory over Napoleon. ibid.