FEW FIGURES have done as much to popularise history as Lucy Worsley, the presenter of such shows as Six Wives, Royal Palace Secrets and Suffragettes.
And yet, when Lucy suggested to her geologist father Peter – an emeritus professor at the University of Reading – that she might study history at Oxford, he told her she “would end up cleaning toilets for a living”.
“My father thinks that scientists are going to save the world, so he wanted me to be one,” Lucy told the Telegraph in 2018. “I started to do Biology, Chemistry and Maths for my A-Levels to please him and I even got through a whole term. It was my mother who noticed I wasn’t really enjoying it. So I made the change.”
Lucy went on to read Ancient and Modern History at New College, Oxford and, in November 2018 was given an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for her services to history and heritage. Did her dad admit his mistake? “He might grumpily give a huff if someone says, ‘you were wrong weren’t you’?”
Lucy was born in 1973, and, because of her father’s work, had a rather unsettled childhood.
