Friday Photo: Lucy Worsley

This week’s Friday photo is a departure from our normal historic site, as it features the wonderful Lucy Worsley – historian, author, Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces, BBC presenter and all round history icon.  Last night I had the pleasure of attending Lucy’s talk “The Art of Murder” in which she delved deeper into the national fascination with ‘a good murder’ by considering notorious historic murders and popular crime fiction. Lucy started with a quote from George Orwell “It is a Sunday…You put your feet up on the sofa, settle your spectacles on your nose, and open the News of the World…In these blissful circumstances, what is it that you want to read about? Naturally, about a murder.”  This led her to explore why Britain was fascinated by murders. Lucy looked at some early crimes, including the notorious Red Barn murder in Suffolk, which provoked numerous newspapers articles, songs and plays and bizarrely even souvenir gift items. The early notorious crimes highlight how the British public became obsessed with murder. Lucy then considered how real life crimes inspired crime fiction writing. Early novels relished in the juicy details of murder, but after the horrors of WW1, crime fiction became a little more polite with the rise of the country house “whodunit” from writers like Agatha Christie.  After the talk the audience really got stuck during the Q&A with some interesting questions for Lucy, ranging from “how would you commit the perfect murder” to ” did Richard III really kill the two little princes in the tower”. Overall a great evening was had by all and £5500 was raised in support of the Coffin Works!