India, Oct. 1 -- Years after everyone else, I finally started watching The Tudors. Jonathan Rhys Meyers is Henry VIII and Natalie Dormer is Anne Boleyn, and the familiar story of the king and his six wives unfolds through sex, intrigue, and beheadings.

The series also sent me back to Lucy Worsley. For 21 years, Worsley worked at Historic Royal Palaces, becoming Chief Curator in 2003. Her work gave her access to some of Britain's best-known royal buildings, including Hampton Court Palace and the Tower of London. In 2025, she cleared out her office at Hampton Court and left to become, as she puts it, a "historian at large".

Her new book, Queens and Kings: An Unusually Personal History (Hodder & Stoughton), draws on those years. It covers ...