Hello listeners, welcome to this new mini-series on the Historic Royal Palaces podcast.

I'm Lucy Worsley, Chief Curator, and in this six-part series, our curator's team will be venturing into some of our favourite spaces in the palaces.

Now, my colleagues and I have chosen these spaces especially in the hope that we can transport you to some of our favourite moments in history.

So please get ready to escape to the past with us.

So we're here at Kensington Palace. We're stood outside the palace on the east front.

So we're facing towards Hyde Park.

It's a beautiful sunny day.

And this would actually have been the back garden

when Princess Victoria lived here in the early 19th century.

You might be able to hear the geese in the background

because we're not far from the big round pond, which is

a point in the landscape that really, for me, connects us and Victoria. Her mother talks about

looking out of the window from the room in which she gave birth to the princess and looking out over that pond and often when I'm in that space

I sort of look out at it myself and feel that this point of connection between me and

Victoria and her mother in these spaces.

This would have been the back garden. Actually you would have entered the palace from the other side of the building.

And you would have walked into the Stone Hall, which would have been the entrance to the Duke and Duchess of Kent's apartments.

The Duke was the fourth son of George III, and he was given an apartment here at Kensington at the end of the 18th century.

My name is Claudia. I'm the curator here at Kensington Palace and today I'm going to show you one of the most special rooms in the building for me. Okay, so we're just about to go up the stairs to Princess Victoria's apartments.

This lower floor would have been where the servants' quarters were, where the things like

the kitchens were,

and also the Duke of Kent's library in his office.

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