Hello, I'm Lucy Worsley, chief curator at Historic Royal Palaces.

You're listening to our podcast that explores the history and stories of our six palaces.

These talks are a collection of some of our best live events.

I really hope you enjoy listening.

History has traditionally taken a negative view of women in power. really hope you enjoy listening.

History has traditionally taken a negative view of women in power.

This series of talks from our archive explores stories of powerful women and how their legacies have been shaped by their gender.

In this talk, historian Dr Anna Whitelock explores how Elizabeth I

first cleverly use gender and gossip to manipulate a court full of men.

Discover how this remarkable monarch changed the state of power play

in what was traditionally a man's world.

I suppose, as I'm sure you're aware,

there is so many books on Elizabeth.

And she's one of the most popular, infamous queens.

And you only have to think about, in terms of films films over the years some of the sort of our very

best actresses have played the part of elizabeth the cape blanchet here i did this talk in

america actually and showed some pictures there and at the end of it they said to me you didn't

put up a picture of Elizabeth in Blackadder.

And I didn't even know Blackadder made it there, but they were really like, you know,

that was the Elizabeth that really stuck in their minds, which was quite interesting.

So when I started thinking about wanting to write a book on Elizabeth, I'd finished a book on Mary.

And of course, Mary was a much easier undertaking in the sense of there'd been less work on her.

...