Dad told me ‘take science or your career is history’, says TV’s Worsley
SHE is one of the UK’s leading historians, who has risen through the ranks to become chief curator at the Historic Royal Palaces and regularly features on the BBC in her own TV series.
But when Lucy Worsley told her scientist father that she wanted to study history at Oxford University, he told her she “would be cleaning lavatories for a living”.
Ms Worsley went on to read ancient and modern history at New College and, in June this year, was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for her services to history and heritage.
“My father is a geologist, and he really thinks that scientists are going to save the world, so he wanted me to be one,” Ms Worsley said.
“I started to do biology, chemistry and maths for my A-levels to please him. It was my mother who noticed I wasn’t really enjoying it. So I made the change.
“When I went to tell my father, he said I would ‘be cleaning lavatories for a living with your history degree’. But he is often reminded of it, so has paid the price in shame and humiliation.”
Her father, Peter Worsley, is an emeritus professor of quaternary geology at the University of Reading.
Ms Worsley, 45, who lives in Southwark, south London, with her husband, Mark, said the “really important” book that changed her mind was The Young Elizabeth, about Queen Eliza- beth I, by Jean Plaidy. She said: “I have still got it, with a very battered cover.”
Aside from her role at the Historic Royal Palaces, Ms Worsley has a successful broadcasting career that “sort of happened by accident”. Her most recent series is Suffragettes with Lucy Worsley.
“My ideal viewer is an 11-year-old girl who might be in the position of deciding what to make of the world and what to do with her life”, she said.
Ms Worsley, who described the low number of female academic historians in British universities as “a bit rubbish”, said she often hears from young women who were inspired to study history after watching one of her shows.
“What truly gives me joy is when I get a letter from a young woman who says they saw a programme, they read a book, they went to an evening class, and then studied for a history degree at the Open University – and now they want my job. I am very happy to engineer my own obsolescence in that way.”
Ms Worsley’s latest book, Queen Victoria: Daughter, Mother, Wife, Widow,