Well, this was delightful. For those of you unfamiliar with Lucy Worsley, I don’t know how. The woman is everywhere. In print, streaming, and in your social media. I think the best way to describe her is that she constantly looks like she is having the BEST time. Now, she is doing it in book form with Queens and Kings.
To keep it short (for me anyway), Worsley was a super important (not according to her) curator and got to spend time where many famous Britons called home. What she covers in this book is basically short rundowns of various queens and kings with a bit of a contrarian air. It’s the fun kind of contrarian, not the smug kind. For instance, Mary I? Wasn’t as bad as her reputation. Queen Anne? How happy would you be after 17 pregnancies? Sprinkled throughout are short anecdotes about Worsley’s own career that range from insightful to utterly hilarious. I shall not forget the image of Worsley having to army-crawl under a window so as not to spoil the view.
This book will work best for those not steeped in British history especially from the Tudors onward. Worsley is having fun (like I keep saying) and is not trying to write dissertations or extended think-pieces on each monarch. This is more of a high-level overview to stimulate some new perspectives and entice non-history readers to look a little deeper.
(This book was provided as a review copy by Pegasus Books.)
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