Royal Sex: Queen Victoria
Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society
History Hit
4.8 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 4 July 2025
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
With NINE children, it can probably be assumed that Queen Victoria was no stranger to the sheets, but what do we actually know about her love (and sex) life?
To examine Victoria's diaries, her passionate relationship and her society's attitude to sex, Kate is joined for this special episode by Royal Historian Kate Williams and journalist Robert Hardman. Kate and Robert are cohosts of 'Queens, Kings and Dastardly Things', a podcast from the Daily Mail.
Listen to find out why bicycle porn was all the rage!
This episode was edited by Tomos Delargy. The producers were Sophie Gee and Benedick Devlin. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.
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All music from Epidemic Sounds.
Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello everyone, it's me your host, Kate Lister. I'm just jumping in before the episode to ask you for a little favour. |
| 0:07.6 | If you are enjoying betwixt, and I hope that you are, we'd love it if you could vote for us for the |
| 0:12.5 | Listeners Choice Awards at the British Podcast Awards. If you follow the link in the show notes, |
| 0:17.9 | it should take you to the place you need to go and it would mean the world to us. We were shortlisted last year and the one before that, and the one before that. |
| 0:27.8 | We were so close. And it just made us want it even more. I think we can do it this year. |
| 0:34.1 | Right on with the show. Hello, my lovely bird twixt. It's me, Cain Lister. You are you, |
| 0:40.1 | I am me and this is Betwicks the sheets. And thank goodness you've decided to pop by once |
| 0:46.3 | more to have me whittering into your ear holes. But before we can go any further together, |
| 0:51.2 | I have to tell you, this is an adult podcast. Welcome by adults to to other adults about adulty things and an adulty way covering around adult subjects and |
| 0:56.8 | be an adult too. We call that the fair do's warning, because fair dues, we didn't tell you it was |
| 1:01.3 | going to get rude. Right, on with the show. A 20-year-old woman writes feverishly in her diary. |
| 1:12.4 | She's recollecting the night before her cheeks, neck and bosom are flushing as she does |
| 1:18.0 | so. |
| 1:18.5 | Her heartbeat is racing. |
| 1:19.9 | Her breath is shallow. |
| 1:21.6 | She writes by gas lamp alone at night. |
| 1:24.1 | These words are for her and her alone. |
| 1:27.1 | Except that they're not, because this 20-year-old |
| 1:30.1 | woman is a queen and these pages will be poured over by historians, royal experts and, well, |
| 1:37.1 | nosy bitches like me. |
| 1:46.8 | What do you look for a man? |
| 1:48.1 | Oh, money, of course. |
... |
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