Hello and welcome to the Historic Royal Palaces podcast, the podcast that explores the history and stories of our six palaces and the people whose lives have been shaped by them.

I'm Matthew Story, a curator here at the Palaces, and today we're celebrating Pride Month, a month of celebration for the

LGBT-plus community that highlights queer lives and experiences around the world, in culture

and in history. We'll be sharing some stories from our palaces that speak to queer experiences

and the history of gender and sexuality. Understanding queer history is a multifaceted process.

The words we use and the way we think about gender and sexuality today,

like so many things, are of course different from the past.

But when we examine historical perspectives of queer desire and gender nonconformity,

we add so much to our understanding

of history. Joining me today is my colleague Dr. Holly Marsden, who recently finished her PhD on Mary

the 2nd, and is currently an assistant research curator at Historic Royal Palaces, looking into

the Stuarts at Kensington Palace. We're also joined by Dr. Kit Heyam, a writer,

heritage practitioner, trans awareness trainer and academic, who has published a fantastic book

called Before We Were Trans, a global history of gender nonconformity. Thank you both for being here.

Thanks for having me. It's lovely to be here. Thank you. I'm so excited to talk about the histories of our palaces today.

I should mention now that as well as bringing you some fun stories today, there will also

be some heavy themes and antiquated language coming up in this episode, as is inevitable

when discussing LGBTQ plus histories. Do please check the show notes for content warnings.

Now, Holly, for our listeners who may be less familiar with the term queer history,

can you just explain to us what it means and why it's an important area of history to examine?

Of course. So the term queer has a very complex history and I understand that people may have

negative or difficult

...