Hello, I'm Lucy Worsley, chief curator at Historic Royal Palluses.

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.

Tis the season to be jolly, so we've dipped into our stocking full of podcasts and pulled

out three festive talks that explore Christmas traditions through the ages.

In this episode, Kate Howard from Past Pleasures talks about the roots of the traditional

Christmas Panto in an era that brought entertainment to the masses.

Well, thank you, yes. While Rosanna fiddles with the PowerPoint and puts it back on track,

I shall just say a little word about past pleasures. As Rosanna mentioned, we work from

project to project, putting people in historical costume in all sorts of sites.

And this means that, well, because we don't use scripts, we have to absorb quite a lot of

research material each time we do a new project or a new period. Can you all hear me at the back,

by the way? Yes. It's really good. Let me know if you can't, and I will speak up the way we do outside at the Tower of London.

But this means that we acquire a lot of information and are well used to researching a lot of times and over a lot of different topics.

But this particular topic, the history of the theatre, is something that I have had in my chest for a long, long, long time, long before I started working

for past pleasures. So, yes, that's where I'm bringing my knowledge and interest and love

of this particular topic to you. I've been asked to present to you about Victoria, particularly,

as we are in her bedroom, as we said, and Kensington and her connections

to particularly the art of pantomime in its evolution. So that's what we're going to think about.

Oh, yes, we are. Oh, yes, we are. Does anybody, but do put your hands up if you have never seen a pantomime. Curious as that question may seem last year, we had, there we go, gentlemen there, hello, gentlemen, over there. Lovely, don't be ashamed. We completely understand. There may be people who have no idea what the pantomime, a peculiarly English form of theatre is, and I hope to unpack a few of those mysteries to you today.

And as you have just heard, for those who do know about pantomime as a form, it involves a lot of audience interaction.

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