Sophia Duleep Singh - Suffragette and Revolutionary

Historic Royal Palaces Podcast

Historic Royal Palaces

London, Palace, Tower, Historic, Conservation, Royal, Lecture, Learning, Kensington, Hampton, Kew, Banqueting, History, Court, Of, House, Palaces

4.6 • 635 Ratings

🗓️ 9 February 2023

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For this week’s episode we’re bringing you a talk from our archives by journalist and author Anita Anand, on the extraordinary life of Princess Sophia Duleep Singh

As the daughter of the deposed Maharaja Duleep Singh and Goddaughter to Queen Victoria, Sophia learned to use her fame and position to passionately fight for gender equality as a suffragette. She even campaigned regularly outside Hampton Court Palace.

It's difficult to do justice to the life of this incredible woman, but Anita Anand dives into Sophia's story and brings it into the light, from her Sikh family heritage to her involvment in the fight for women's suffrage.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Lucy Worsley, chief curator at Historic Royal Palaces. You're listening to our podcast
0:08.2	that explores the history and stories of our six palaces. These talks are a collection of
0:14.1	some of our best live events. I really hope you enjoy listening. In this talk, journalist and author Anita Anandth talks to us about the extraordinary
0:25.0	life of the Princess Suffragette and revolutionary Sophia D'Leep Singh.
0:32.1	Princess Sophia, and actually was styled Sophia in those days.
0:36.1	It was the Victorian styling of her name.
0:39.0	Spent so much of her time here at Hampton Court. But when I came across her, I'll tell you how it all
0:44.7	happened, how it all started. I was on maternity leave and I don't know whether many of you
0:51.5	sort of share this experience, but when you have your first child,
0:58.8	you do everything that you read in the book. So everything had to be silent. Everything had to be so quiet. I had to turn off the TV and radio and everything I ever worked in because I desperately
1:03.5	wanted this child to sleep. With my second child, he could go to a war zone now. It would be fine.
1:08.5	But the first child, you know, you have that kind of anxiety. And I read everything that came into the house, things I'd never read before.
1:15.8	And there was a local magazine, which I was having a suffragette exhibition. And I sort of turned
1:22.3	the page and there was a picture. And in my sleep deprived state, I kind of just stayed with this
1:26.8	picture for a very long time.
1:28.1	It was the picture that is now on the front of the book,
1:30.6	which was this year on the front of a royal male postage stamp,
1:34.9	which was an extraordinary thing.
1:37.5	Yeah, now I read, yeah, do clap.
1:39.4	Clap, it is amazing.
1:41.2	It is a rebel princess with the Queen of England looking down upon her. It's not a bad thing.
1:46.0	But I sort of saw this picture and it said underneath suffragettes selling newspapers outside Hampton Court Palace.
	...

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