Our Lucy Worstley Takes on an American Shibboleth

Lucy's run out of British myths to bust?

I'm living for this. I love her strange voice, weird mannerisms and page boy haircut. She knows she's popular in the US as well and dammit, she's going to cash in.

It's a niche market, but those Americans who know who she is devour everything she produces.

Personally, I like REAL historians like this - not just some TV personality. And I think they appreciate their fame a lot more - imagine being a PhD and a prof, just a regular citizen, then you do a show and you start to get recognized.

Heads start to turn when you walk into a restaurant, people say hello in the shops or stop you on the street. She must be giddy about it.

She always looks like she's trying to imitate Jane Horrocks's look in LITTLE VOICE.

R3 - she does have a little bit of an academic, cleaned-up ABFAB Bubble look about her.

I hate, hate, hate her schtick. I have a Ph.D. in History (not US-- I actually know foreign languages) from a top Ivy and I NEVER act like this, or associate with any pompous try hard twat who acts like this. She's a caricature of what people think historians should be.

R5 - here's a pic of Lucy not caring at all about what you said.

She's the child of an academic herself. It's infotainment and she does it well. I hope it inspires people to learn more about history.

It's not that deep R5. There are far worse people to hate - like Alan Dershowitz.

R6 here - or Cornell West!

History can be very dry but Lucy manages to make it entertaining. That's why she's been a hit with viewers.

I've enjoyed most of her other shows. Looking forward to this one.

Cornel West is an accomplished philosopher. Yes, he went crazy, but he was a very talented scholar in his day. I'm all for popular history, but this pretentious woman rubs me the wrong way.

[quote]this pretentious woman rubs me the wrong way.

Then don't watch the show.

I want to bitch slap her so hard that the red flies off her thin, alien lips.

She looks like she could be a Ninja Turtle's girlfriend.

R9 - ok - but if we're getting upset about someone being pretentious, have you SEEN Cornel West's interviews and speeches the last 15 years? Race Matters was 30 years ago - and he's still living off that. Pretentious, sanctimonious, egotistical - one of the biggest assholes in academia.

With your background and line of work, I know it's easy to criticize colleagues like this - but for the rest of us, she's entertaining and holds your attention. She also looks like she really enjoys learning about it.

Unlike other TV presenters who are doing it for a paycheck and are dumb as a box of rocks.

I watch a shit ton of British history videos on YouTube so I've watched a lot of her videos and find her interesting. Yeah, she looks kind of cutesy and affected but she is not a fake when it comes to history. I do prefer Tracy Borman's videos though.

She has gradually turned into Miss Babs from Acorn Antiques.

I've always thought Philomena Cunk is primarily a parody of Lucy Worsley (though Cunk's creator Diane Morgan has denied that it's directly meant to be her).

Philomena Cunk is hilarious but her schtick is totally different from the way Worsley presents history and it never occurred to me she was parodying Worsley when there are so many other British history presenters and history shows besides Worsley's.

I cannot deal with Lucy. She drives me insane.

Not me, I wuv Wucy Worswey

Philomena Cunk isn't a historian and her whole shtick must appeal to British sense of humor, because I don't find it funny or entertaining at all.

Here's her 'best of' moments. As an American, I don't find it funny at all - super annoying actually.

But that must be that British 'taking the piss' crap that nobody understands but the Brits.

A friend of mine used to enjoy Lucy Worsley until I pointed out her odd lisp. Now he can't watch her (he's odd that way). I used to like her until I started finding her awfully twee. I don't hate her or anything, I just stopped watching her. But if she gets more people interested in history, well done her.

R5 You don't have to like her, but I don't think it's her fault if some people think she epitomizes what a historian is like. She's quite unique, to me. I have a Bachelor's in History, and I never met a single history professor who behaved or even dressed like Lucy Worsley, so you're right that she shouldn't be taken as an example of what the majority of historians are like. She is fun and makes history interesting, so for that, I like her.

[quote] Philomena Cunk isn't a historian

She's NOT!?

You've just shocked everyone on this forum!

She's really insufferable.

It started with her putting on Elizabethan-style dresses and pretending to be regal.

Ugh.

What's wrong with putting on Elizabethan gowns? A LOT of people are interested in historic clothing.

It started with the barrettes, not the gowns.

Her book on Jane Austen is really rather good.

I love her and Suzannah Lipscomb.

[quote] She is fun and makes history interesting, so for that, I like her.

Well, if everybody likes her and she makes history fun, more power to her. I just can't stand her affectations. From my perspective, she makes history seem like the purview of assholes and English twats rather than something anyone could do.

[quote]What's wrong with putting on Elizabethan gowns?

Not a thing, I say!

I've only seen Ms. Worsley in those Agatha Christie shows she did, and this was my comment on Datalounge at the time:

[quote]Did anyone watch that new series with Lucy Worsley where she delves into Agatha herself? First episode was on PBS last Sunday. I'd never seen Ms. Worsley before; for the first half hour I was not convinced she was a biological female.

Do you like this thread's headline?

But it isn’t “something anyone could do.” She’s highly educated and accomplished. If you just don’t like her personality that’s your prerogative but I don’t understand your need to demean her. She is a real historian who has made history accessible for people who might not otherwise have learned about it.

If you don't understand the need to demean people, what are you doing on Datalounge?

My husband said her writer must hate her because the words in the script emphasize her lisp and I said SHE writes her material. 🤣

I'm a straight frau and she's not your thing or mine but I bet she's absolute filth in bed.

[quote] If you just don’t like her personality that’s your prerogative but I don’t understand your need to demean her.

You sound like a Taylor Swift fan girl butthurt because someone doesn’t like the 10 minute version of All Too Well as much as the original. Knock it off. Not everyone has the same tastes as you.

I liked the Agatha Christie documentary but at the same time it wasn’t particularly insightful. I learned nothing from it I didn’t know already and I haven’t read a single Christie biography.

Oh - it's a BBC production - I thought she was going stateside with her shtick.

You can tell it's a BBC production because of how she got into a yellow school bus - Brits are obsessed with our yellow school buses for some reason. They bring it up far too often.

And you sound like an ignorant buffoon who hates people smarter than you are, R36.

R39, watching a TV show doesn’t make you smarter than anyone. It just makes you someone who watched a TV show.

DL cracks me up.

You would think Lucy Worsley would be one of our patron saints...she's a snarky, funny historian who likes to point out the falsehoods of history and does so while wearing cute coats and barrettes. And, she likes to play dress up!

She's one of Us!

I adore her.

And, I'm not sure why OP posted that clip...that's an old show from several years ago.

Suzannah Lipscomb is also a treasure. Love her "Hidden Killers of the Home" series...especially the one expert dude who says about everything:

"It was ab-so-lute-ly LETHAL!!!"

Philomena Cunk stole her entire act from Ali G.

I’ve always liked her until recently. She’s made every show over the last couple of years about misogyny in history and debunking “myths” around witches and evil queens and such. Recently she had an episode devoted to dispelling the “myth” that Queen “Bloody” Mary was really just a misunderstood strong leader and that her reputation is due to men who were jealous of her. Seriously, she’s become eye-rolling.

I shot my TV because she was on the screen.

She is insufferable indeed. I read her Agatha Christie biography, where she tries to be edgy by saying Archie Christie was “hot”. She also sells her speculations has irrefutable truth and declares them with utmost conviction and no evidence.

But to me the worse part was how she declared, in a podcast, rather proudly, that for preparation she’d read around a half of Christie’s novels. Bitch please, if you’re writing a writer’s biography the least you could do is read ALL of her works.

[quote] You would think Lucy Worsley would be one of our patron saints...she's a snarky, funny historian who likes to point out the falsehoods of history and does so while wearing cute coats and barrettes. And, she likes to play dress up! She’s one of Us!

She probably isn’t one of our patron saints because your very description makes her sound like a middle-aged Buffy The Vampire Slayer recapper circa 2003 who spends her time on FameTracker squeeing over her TV Boyfriend Topher Grace.

As I said upthread, her Agatha Christie documentary provided no new insights to me. The Jane Austen one was only slightly more enlightening. I don’t mind her presenting style but the information she presents is really at a basic level.

R47 TV documentaries are about relaying BASIC information. They're for a mass audience.

And, what sort of deep insight are you going to get from a documentary about a mainstream writer? If anything, the Christie documentary was a tad longer than it needed to be, which is true of a lot of documentaris.

You people are hilarious.

R24, Worstley is the issue, not the clothes. At a certain point it all started to be about her and her speech impediment, rather than the topic.

If you want to watch mincing people dress up and prance around, go on, then. Find a mirror, even.

Unless you already have one for the purpose.

She has a BBC radio series, Lady Killers, which has developed into Lady Swindlers, telling the true stories of female criminals in history.

My personal favourite was about wealthy Glasgow Victorian bad girl Madeleine Smith, who got away with poisoning her impoverished and inconvenient lover (her parents were trying to marry her off to someone more suitable) when he tried to blackmail her. The verdict was Not Proven. She escaped the gallows, emigrated to the US and lived into her nineties. What a woman.

I'm astounded there are so many defenders of this annoying woman who is akin to the Guy Fieri of popular history. It's only a matter of time before she debuts a bath collection at Target with facts about powerful women emblazoned on each towel.

“The pwusecutiom of women duuuUring that time wuz absolutely cawamitous. Fwum acoozed witches to powuful qweens, men wudunt stop until evewy woman was subjugated to their will!” —-> Lucy Worsley in every “historical” documentary she does.

She’s fine but she is no Mary Beard.

R48 Make up your mind, toots. The Lucy Stans are claiming that people who don’t care for her shows don’t have the intellect to appreciate her, and also shouldn’t be watching her TV shows for deep insight.

You all sound a bit too invested.

No. We just enjoy her interesting shows. They're light educational entertainment. And, she's snarky fun.

The haters on here are the weird ones.

If you don't like her..don't watch her.

Though I'm curious what deep meaningful historical documentaries y'all watch.

“Snarky fun”.

That shows your level of intellect.

Again, R56 what historical docs do you watch?

We're waiting....

Ah! I know...you only watch Ken Burns stuff!!!

Which is...fine. Some of them are overly dramatic. Some are too talky. The Ben Franklin one put me to sleep.

Two things: She’s interesting and knows how to tell a story — no matter how intelligent or educated, if you can’t engage people then you’ll always be outdone by people like her. Also, she’s like Dan Snow — attractive and relatable.

I talked to Dan Snow at a book event at Hatchard’s. I didn’t know who he was at the time, but a British friend was deeply envious. Now that I know who he is I find him enjoyable. And he’s even better looking in person.

Forgot the second thing about the video. My first apartment in the North End looked out over that statue of Paul Revere. I doubt I could even afford it now.

Thanks, OP. I’ve been craving British TV as of late so now I’m going to seek out more Lucy Worsley programs.

She’s middlebrow. Which is fine, if that’s your thing. She invests more in appearances and elocution than the subject at hand. As someone remarked up thread, a documentary hour about Agatha Christie, she’s fine, it’s impossible to go deep.

But she also wrote a biography on the subject and is all over the place. Compare her middling podcasts with The Rest Is History guys. They know their business and are alsp very funny. She is a quack and sounds like one.

She's hideous to look at, she has a raging cosplay problem, and watching her painted on missing lips makes it difficult to listen to what she is lisping.

R52 - that's pretty damn good what you did there. I could hear her voice while reading that.