If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home - Paperback

by Lucy Worsley (Author)

From the Joint Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces and BBC Television series including Lucy Worsley: Mozart's London Odyssey and Six Wives with Lucy Worsley, available on Netflix.

"Worsley is a thoughtful, charming, often hilarious guide to life as it was lived, from the mundane to the esoteric." -The Boston Globe

Why did the flushing toilet take two centuries to catch on? Why did medieval people sleep sitting up? When were the two "dirty centuries"? Why, for centuries, did rich people fear fruit?

In her brilliantly and creatively researched book, Lucy Worsley takes us through the bedroom, bathroom, living room, and kitchen, covering the history of each room and exploring what people actually did in bed, in the bath, at the table, and at the stove-from sauce stirring to breast-feeding, teeth cleaning to masturbating, getting dressed to getting married-providing a compelling account of how the four rooms of the home have evolved from medieval times to today, charting revolutionary changes in society.

Author Biography

Lucy Worsley is Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces, the independent charity that looks after the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, Kensington Palace State Apartments, the Banqueting House in Whitehall, and Kew Palace in Kew Gardens. The author of The Courtiers: Splendor and Intrigue in the Georgian Court at Kensington Palace and Cavalier: A Tale of Chivalry, Passion, and Great Houses, and My Name is Victoria, a novel for young readers, she lives in London.