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.

The Stuart period is marked by decadence and debauchery.

Experience the Stuart court in all its nuanced splendour in this series compiled from our

archive.

In this talk, Historic Royal Palace's curator Olivia Fryman delves into court life, fashion, etiquette and

intrigue during the latter years of the Stuart Court.

The subject of this evening's talk and performance is the beautiful life,

the life lived by the rich, the powerful and of course the beautiful men and women of the late Stuart Court.

As Rachel mentioned, I'm part of the curatorial team here, historic royal palaces,

and over the last year I've had the opportunity to contribute to beauty, sex and power,

the book to accompany our current exhibition here at Hempton Court, The Wild, the Beautiful and the Damned.

Our theme for both the exhibition and the book is beauty at the late Stuart Courts

and how it was represented in the sumptuous portraiture of the period, produced by the court artists Peter Lelly and Godfrey Nella.

Lely and Nella were of course responsible for the two famous series of portraits that live

permanently here at Hampton Court, the Windsor beauties painted by Lelly in the 1660s, and the

Hampton Court beauties painted by Nella in the 1690s. These depict the most important and most

beautiful female courtiers in the circles of Anne Hyde,

the first wife of James Duke of York, the future King James II, and the ladies of their daughter,

Mary the Second, who from 1689 ruled alongside her husband, William III.

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