Hello and welcome to Life of the Week from History Extra, where leading historians delve into the lives of history's most intriguing and significant figures.

No one epitomised the wild spirit of the restoration era, quite like Nell Gwynn. An orange cellar turned actress, turned royal mistress. She hustled her way to the

very top with charm, wisecracks and withering put-downs. For today's Life of the Week episode,

Ellie Cawthorne spoke to Sophie Shawland about Gwyn's Rags to Rich's story.

It's lovely to have you on the podcast, Sophie, because we're going to be delving into

the life of one of the most remarkable characters of the restoration era.

Can you give us a 60-second intro to Nell Gwynn?

What can we expect in this episode?

So Nell Gwynn is sometimes known as the 17th century

Cinderella because she was a bit of a kind of rags to Rich's tale. So she grew up incredibly poor,

a really, really difficult life. She was possibly a child prostitute and then became one of

the first ever actresses on the English stage,

became incredibly successful, and then eventually caught the eye of King Charles II,

became one of his principal mistresses, sometimes known as his countryside mistress,

even though she was actually quite, you know, London, bit cockney,

and had a love affair with him that lasted until the end of his life and made quite a lot of money from it.

Amazing summary, and that's a great sense of some of the incredible stories to come.

So let's go back to the beginning of Nell's life.

What do we know for certain and watch some of the stories that are told about her upbringing?

Yeah, I think because she's been such a popular figure over the years and, you know, this idea of kind of like Cinderella, she's really caught the imagination.

Her early life is very contested. So I think lots of places want her to have been born there. So Hereford

claims her Oxford, London. I personally think London's probably the most likely for where she was

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