Queens, Kings, and Dastardly Things

Revolution, the American divorce, and the true history of the sandwich! Robert and Kate return to the American War of Independence as the story moves beyond declarations and slogans, and into the long, uncertain struggle of what independence actually meant. Joined by a special guest, historian, broadcaster, and Gilded Age expert Julie Montagu, Countess of Sandwich, they explore the years after 177...

Celebrating the 250th anniversary of American Independence - unfolding the momentous history. Robert and Kate kick off a three-part deep dive into one of history’s significant break-ups: how George III went from being “King of America” to the monarch who lost an entire continent. From the earliest English colonies - Jamestown’s swampy gamble, and the Puritans braving the Mayflower crossing - to th...

Love, loss, and a queen who deserves to be famous again. This week, Kate is joined by historian and broadcaster Alice Loxton, whose new book follows a wonderfully bonkers idea: walking 200 miles in December to retrace the funeral route of Eleanor of Castile, England’s “lost queen.” Eleanor was no mild medieval consort. She introduced carpets and forks, built dazzling Castilian-style gardens, amass...

Behind every coronation, balcony wave and solemn procession lies a simple truth: royalty is theatre. In this sparkling, story-packed episode of Queens, Kings & Dastardly Things , Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams pull back the velvet curtain on the royals’ surprisingly long, and often hilarious, love affair with pantomime. From Henry VIII discovering Anne Boleyn through a masked perfo...

A seasonal cracker from the podcast that loves Royals and history - listen now. In this special edition of Queens, Kings & Dastardly Things , Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams unwrap the surprisingly rich, and frequently eccentric, festive legacy of the monarchy. From a 10th-century duke reinvented as a Victorian Christmas hero, to Henry VIII moonlighting as a carol writer, to the Tud...

The real-life Game of Thrones continues - listen now. In the second part of our deep dive into the Wars of the Roses, Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams pick up the story at England’s bloodiest moment: the Battle of Towton. From boy kings and warrior queens to vanishing princes and spectacular betrayals, this is the era when the crown changed hands with alarming regularity. We follow Edwar...

The Wars of the Roses is the  real-life Game of Thrones  - the conflict that inspired George R. R. Martin’s world of rival houses, contested thrones, formidable queens, and sudden, shocking reversals of fortune. But long before fantasy claimed it, this struggle was one of the  pivotal turning points in British history . In the first of a two-parter, Robert Hardman and Professor Kate...

A queen knelt, a sword flashed, a dynasty shifted.  This episode looks at how and why the execution of Henry VIII’s second wife became one of the most iconic, mesmerising moments in British history. Professor Kate dives straight into the charged final minutes of the execution, peeling back the myths, the melodrama, and the emotions of that fatal walk to the scaffold. Anne hoped, right up to t...

What is Princess Diana’s legacy? In our final episode on the Princess of Wales’s life, Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams pick up the story at  the  turning point: the Royal separation that launched the most consequential chapter of her life, her emergence as a global humanitarian supernova. Diana shakes hands with patients in AIDS wards, embraces children with leprosy, confronts...

The fairytale is starting to fall apart ... In the second part of our Diana deep dive, Kate Williams and Robert Hardman pick up the story just after that balcony kiss, and follow the new Princess of Wales through the most dazzling and difficult years of her royal life. From the Riviera honeymoon aboard Britannia to the birth of Prince William, from the Australian tour that electrified a nation to...

The first episode in our deep-dive exploration of the most influential figures in modern royal history - Diana, Princess of Wales . It begins as the greatest love story of the age: a shy nursery assistant, a lonely prince, and a glittering wedding watched by nearly a billion people. But before the heartbreak, the revenge dresses and the headlines, there was the young Lady Diana Spencer - awkward,...

OMRG*, we’ve got a genuinely Royal corgi in the studio,  a four-legged, waggy-tailed world exclusive on Queens, Kings & Dastardly Things . Listen Now Joining Kate and Robert is Lee, a champion pedigree Welsh corgi descended directly from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s own beloved dogs, alongside her breeder, Mary Davies, who once met the Queen herself to arrange an aristocratic “blind d...

Are Princes Andrew and Harry the most troublesome ‘spares’ in royal history? You might  think  so — but buckle up, because history is littered with spares who partied harder, plotted darker and pushed the Crown to breaking point. Welcome to  Queens, Kings & Dastardly Things , where royal biographers Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams take you inside the palace doors to m...

Prince Harry may have put the word  spare  on the map, but he and his uncle Prince Andrew are not the first royal to grumble about being second in line. In this week’s episode, Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams dig into centuries of royal runners-up — from Elizabeth I to George V — the siblings who weren’t meant to rule, yet somehow stole the show. From party-loving princes to q...

Was Churchill her favourite PM — and who did the Queen secretly loathe? Find out in this week’s royally revealing episode of  Queens, Kings & Dastardly Things !   Robert Hardman is joined by royal biographer  Andrew Morton  — yes, the man behind  Diana: Her True Story  — to spill the palace secrets behind  Queen Elizabeth II’s fifteen Prime Ministers , from W...

Royals in taxis, Groucho Marx glasses on ski slopes, and a Soviet mole hiding in the Queen’s drawing room — this episode has it all. Listen Now. In their second episode of Spies & The Crown, Kate Williams and Robert Hardman go full cloak-and-dagger as they unmask Anthony Blunt — the Queen’s own art adviser turned KGB spy — and dig into the bizarre world of undercover royals. From Princess Eliz...

From the Tudors to King Charles III, the royals have always been close to spies. Listen to find out! Today’s monarchs get discreet MI5 briefings — but back in Elizabeth I’s day, her spymaster Francis Walsingham was inventing the modern secret service with beer-barrel dead drops, forged letters, and a plot that sent Mary Queen of Scots to the block. This episode of Queens, Kings & Dastardly Thi...

“Off with his head!” may be the most famous royal sentence ever passed — but what happens before the axe falls? Can kings and queens actually be locked up like the rest of us? Listen to find out! On today’s episode of Queens, Kings & Dastardly Things, Kate Williams and Robert Hardman dig into the murky history of royal captivity — where velvet cushions meet iron bars, and sovereign immunity do...

Trump’s coming to town — welcome to the towers of Windsor Castle. Hope you like ghosts! Royal biographer Robert Hardman and Prof. Kate Williams whisk us through the protocols of a state visit, Windsor-style: Air Force One → helicopter → the quadrangle, where (yes) the guest correctly walks in front of the monarch for the Guard of Honour. We peek into that turret guest suite with the Long Walk view...

Who was the most monstrous queen — England’s Bloody Mary or France’s Serpent Queen? Listen to find out! This week on Queens, Kings, and Dastardly Things , royal historian Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams pit two formidable women against the seven deadly sins. Mary I of England, daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, fought her way onto the throne and set out to restore Catholici...

Who was the most rotten king of all — treacherous John of England or Shakespeare’s wicked Richard III? Listen to find out! This week on Queens, Kings, and Dastardly Things , royal historian Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams drag two of England’s most notorious monarchs into the dock of history. Armed with the seven deadly sins as their scorecard, they weigh up pride, greed, lust, envy, gl...

Who was history’s most monstrous monarch — Henry VIII of England or Louis XIV of France? Listen to find out! This week on Queens, Kings, and Dastardly Things , royal historian Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams sharpen their quills and their wits. Armed with the seven deadly sins as a scorecard, they put these two titans of royal misbehaviour through their paces. Pride? Henry struts about...

From meat mountains to one lonely kiwi fruit — the royal appetites that shocked history. Listen Now! What’s worse than one demanding royal houseguest? A whole history of them — and in Part Two of Queens, Kings & Dastardly Things , Robert Hardman and Kate Williams dig even deeper into the guest lists from hell. From Henry VIII arriving with a thousand-strong entourage and an appetite for entire...

Royal visits gone wrong: the tantrums, the takings, and the tartest tongues in history. This week, Queens, Kings & Dastardly Things throws open the palace doors to a line-up of monarchs and princes who’ve turned “popping in for tea” into a full-scale ordeal. From Princess Margaret’s legendary put-downs (“How unfortunate”) to Queen Mary’s habit of going home with your best chairs, Robert Hardma...

Pull up a velvet throne and grab your alchemy kit – in this episode of Queens, Kings and Dastardly Things, Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams swirl together Arthurian legends, royal superstition, and some seriously dodgy medieval science. Listen now! Is the Holy Grail real? Can gold be made from stones? Did Diana really have a psychic on speed-dial? And why exactly did Queen Victoria try t...