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Queens, Kings, and Dastardly Things: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Daily Mail
Expert history with a wicked twist: Queens, Kings and Dastardly Things is the podcast that goes behind palace doors and beyond the balcony smiles, to uncover the stories that the history books have politely skipped. Queens, Kings & Dastardly Things reveals the schemers, lovers, plotters and even the pets who’ve made the British monarchy the world’s longest-running reality show. Hosts, Royal biographers Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams trace how power, passion and paranoia have shaped every crown. There are queens who ruled better than their husbands, and princes who partied harder than their people. We meet saints, sinners and those hovering somewhere in between – from the man formerly known as Prince Andrew to the less-vilified Richard III. Sometimes we get reflective: how monarchy survives scandal, how image-making began long before Instagram, and why royal women have always been the best crisis managers in the room. Other times we’re just here for the gossip: who wore what, who slept where, and who accidentally started a war over breakfast. Think of it as history with its crown slightly askew. If you like your royal stories with equal parts grandeur and chaos, step into the world of Queens, Kings & Dastardly Things because behind every coronation lies a cover-up, behind every portrait a scandal, and behind every great monarch… a very patient servant wondering how to get the blood out of the carpet.
Latest Episodes
The most recent episodes — sign up to get AI-powered summaries of each one.
- 5 days ago33 min
Guy Fawkes: The Truth
Guy Fawkes: Who Was Really Behind the Gunpowder Plot?Thirty-six barrels of gunpowder, a plot to blow up the King and Parliament, and a mysterious letter that may have saved them all. But was there more to the Gunpowder Plot than meets the eye?In 1605, a band of Catholic conspirators hatched one of the most audacious assassination plots in British history. Their plan? Blow King James I and the entire political establishment to smithereens, kidnap his nine-year-old daughter and put her on the throne.Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams revisit the extraordinary story of Guy Fawkes and his fellow plotters, from secret meetings in a London pub and barrels of bargain-basement gunpowder to a spectacularly bungled escape in which the conspirators managed to blow themselves up.But who betrayed them? Why did the authorities wait so long to act on a letter warning of the plot? And could the King's own ministers have allowed the conspiracy to unfold for political advantage?With torture, treachery, religious persecution and a royal dynasty hanging in the balance, Robert and Kate explore the real story behind Bonfire Night, and ask whether Guy Fawkes was quite the villain we've been led to believe.Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate WilliamsSeries Producer: Ben DevlinProduction Manager: Vittoria Cecchini Content Editor: Joseph PalmerExecutive Producer: Bella SoamesA Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular.Sign up to Palace Confidential, the FREE royals newsletter from the Mail's top experts. Delivered straight to your inbox every Thursday, it's the smartest way to stay in the royal inner circle. Just head to dailymail.co.uk/palaceconfidential to sign up today. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
- 1 weeks ago32 min
The Great Windsor Fire
How did a builder's lamp, a velvet curtain and a tea break nearly destroy 900 years of royal history?On 20 November 1992, fire broke out at Windsor Castle, turning one of Britain's greatest royal landmarks into an inferno. It was Queen Elizabeth II's 45th wedding anniversary, and the latest catastrophe in a year she would famously describe as her annus horribilis.Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams revisit the extraordinary events of that day, from the frantic rescue of priceless paintings and royal treasures to the Queen's arrival at the burning castle. Robert also reveals what Prince Philip told him about the disaster and how the fire spread through Windsor's ancient rooms and hidden passageways.But the flames were only the beginning. As the damage mounted, so did public fury. Why should taxpayers foot the bill for repairing the home of one of the world's wealthiest families? With royal popularity already in freefall, the fire threatened to become a constitutional and public relations disaster.And then came the extraordinary rebuilding project, complete with proposals for a wave machine, a glass roof and even an eternal flame.From a royal inferno to a remarkable restoration, this is the story of how Windsor Castle nearly went up in smoke.Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate WilliamsSeries Producer: Ben DevlinProduction Manager: Vittoria Cecchini Content Editor: Joseph PalmerExecutive Producer: Bella SoamesA Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular.Sign up to Palace Confidential, the FREE royals newsletter from the Mail's top experts. Delivered straight to your inbox every Thursday, it's the smartest way to stay in the royal inner circle. Just head to dailymail.co.uk/palaceconfidential to sign up today. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
- 2 weeks ago25 min
Victoria: Death of an Empress
Queen Victoria: Scandal, and a Funeral Fiasco.What happens when the most powerful Queen in the world dies and even her funeral doesn't go according to plan?Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams bring their Queen Victoria story to a close, with a monarch who has become a global icon, an empire at the height of its power and a Royal Household still finding plenty to be scandalised about.There's a new favourite at court: Abdul Karim, the young Indian servant who becomes Victoria's trusted companion and teacher, to the fury of her family and courtiers. Meanwhile, her wayward son Bertie is still waiting impatiently for the throne, and the Queen is enjoying the adoration of a nation celebrating her Diamond Jubilee.But in January 1901, after more than 63 years on the throne, Victoria finally dies. The news sends shockwaves around the world and triggers a royal funeral of extraordinary proportions, complete with runaway horses, a furious new King and an astonishing gatecrasher at the graveside.From the Queen's unlikely friendships to the extraordinary blunders of her final farewell, Robert and Kate explore the end of the Victorian age and the remarkable legacy of a woman who opposed votes for women but became an inspiration to the suffragettesHosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate WilliamsSeries Producer: Ben DevlinProduction Manager: Vittoria Cecchini Content Editor: Joseph PalmerExecutive Producer: Bella SoamesA Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular.Sign up to Palace Confidential, the FREE royals newsletter from the Mail's top experts. Delivered straight to your inbox every Thursday, it's the smartest way to stay in the royal inner circle. Just head to dailymail.co.uk/palaceconfidential to sign up today. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
- 3 weeks ago28 min
Victoria's Secrets
Did Queen Victoria find love again and become more powerful than ever?Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams explore the extraordinary second act of Victoria’s reign: a story of grief, scandal, royal gossip and an unlikely new man in the Queen’s life.After the death of her beloved Prince Albert, the 42-year-old Victoria retreats into mourning and largely disappears from public view. Her popularity plummets, republican sentiment grows and then along comes John Brown, the blunt Highland servant who becomes one of her closest companions. Their intense friendship sets tongues wagging, infuriates the Royal Family and earns Victoria the nickname “Mrs Brown”.But the Widow of Windsor is far from finished. There’s an assassination attempt, the recovery of her wayward son Bertie, the spectacular flattery of Benjamin Disraeli and, in 1876, an imposing new title: Empress of India.By her Golden Jubilee, the Queen who had virtually vanished from public life had transformed herself into an imperial matriarch at the centre of a global empire.So what brought Victoria back ... John Brown, Disraeli, or the Queen’s own formidable instinct for survival?Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate WilliamsSeries Producer: Ben DevlinProduction Manager: Vittoria Cecchini Content Editor: Joseph PalmerExecutive Producer: Bella SoamesA Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular.Sign up to Palace Confidential, the FREE royals newsletter from the Mail's top experts. Delivered straight to your inbox every Thursday, it's the smartest way to stay in the royal inner circle. Just head to dailymail.co.uk/palaceconfidential to sign up today. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
- Oct 5, 202626 min
Victoria in Love
A passionate marriage. Nine children. Assassination attempts, and the monarchy is threatened with a scandal.In the second part of our deep dive into Queen Victoria, Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams explore Victoria as wife, mother, monarch and increasingly formidable stateswoman.Her marriage to Prince Albert begins as an intense love affair, but behind the carefully cultivated image of domestic bliss lies a more complicated struggle over who really holds power. As Victoria endures pregnancy after pregnancy, Albert carves out an increasingly influential role beside her, while together they reshape the monarchy and create the intimate royal getaways of Osborne House and Balmoral Castle.Victoria survives multiple assassinations, embraces the new and controversial use of chloroform in childbirth and begins using her growing family to forge dynastic links across Europe.But trouble is brewing much closer to home. Her wayward heir, Bertie, is caught up in a potentially explosive affair, and when an already ailing Albert intervenes, events culminate in his sudden death at just 42.Victoria is left a widow, a mother of nine and a Queen devastated by grief. And she knows exactly who she blames.Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate WilliamsSeries Producer: Ben DevlinProduction Manager: Vittoria Cecchini Content Editor: Joseph PalmerExecutive Producer: Bella SoamesA Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular.Sign up to Palace Confidential, the FREE royals newsletter from the Mail's top experts. Delivered straight to your inbox every Thursday, it's the smartest way to stay in the royal inner circle. Just head to dailymail.co.uk/palaceconfidential to sign up today. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
- Sep 24, 202628 min
Victoria: The Girl Who Became Queen
Queen Victoria would give her name to an age, but she was never really supposed to be Queen at all.Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams go back to the chaotic royal family of George III and the unexpected death that triggered a desperate race to produce an heir, a contest that eventually produced the baby Alexandrina Victoria.Her childhood at Kensington Palace was anything but happy. Controlled by her mother and the domineering John Conroy, Victoria was rarely allowed to be alone, couldn't even walk downstairs without someone holding her hand and grew up knowing that others expected to rule through her.Then, just weeks after her 18th birthday, two men arrived at Kensington Palace with the news that changed everything: William IV was dead, and Victoria was Queen. Her first requests? An hour completely alone – and to have her bed moved out of her mother's room.Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate WilliamsSeries Producer: Ben DevlinProduction Manager: Vittoria Cecchini Content Editor: Joseph PalmerExecutive Producer: Bella SoamesA Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular.Sign up to Palace Confidential, the FREE royals newsletter from the Mail's top experts. Delivered straight to your inbox every Thursday, it's the smartest way to stay in the royal inner circle. Just head to dailymail.co.uk/palaceconfidential to sign up today. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
- Sep 21, 202632 min
The Countess at Nuremberg
An unusual Royal connection to the Nuremberg Trials that prosecuted members of the Nazi leadership.Eighty years after the trials, we know the names of the Nazi leaders in the dock and the MEN who prosecuted them. But what about the extraordinary women who helped bring them to justice?Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams are joined by Natalie Livingstone, author of The Nuremberg Women, to uncover the forgotten female stories behind one of the defining legal events of the 20th century.One of these women was Countess Ingeborg Kálnoky, an aristocratic refugee with links to today’s Royal Family, who found herself running an extraordinary 'witness house' where Holocaust survivors lived under the same roof as members of Hitler’s inner circle as they waited to give evidence at the trials.Above all, there is Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier, the French Resistance fighter who survived Auschwitz and Ravensbrück before confronting the Nazi leadership at Nuremberg with an unforgettable eyewitness account of the horrors she had witnessed.From castles and courtrooms to concentration camps, this is the remarkable story of the women who witnessed history, helped make history, and were then too often written out of it.Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate WilliamsSeries Producer: Ben DevlinProduction Manager: Vittoria Cecchini Content Editor: Joseph PalmerExecutive Producer: Bella SoamesA Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular.Sign up to Palace Confidential, the FREE royals newsletter from the Mail's top experts. Delivered straight to your inbox every Thursday, it's the smartest way to stay in the royal inner circle. Just head to dailymail.co.uk/palaceconfidential to sign up today. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
- Sep 14, 202634 min
Sherlock & Victoria
Welcome to the dastardly world of Victorian medicine.What connects Queen Victoria, Sherlock Holmes, a gruesome Victorian merman and a surgeon who could diagnose a patient with a single glance?Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams are joined by medical historian Dr Lindsey Fitzharris, author of Sleuth Hound: The Case of the Real Sherlock Holmes, to explore the extraordinary world of Victorian medicine and its surprising royal connections.At the heart of the story is Joseph Bell, the brilliant Edinburgh surgeon whose uncanny powers of observation inspired his student Arthur Conan Doyle to create Sherlock Holmes. Bell could read a human body like a crime scene, and in 1881 his remarkable talents brought him face-to-face with Queen Victoria herself.There are bloody surgical aprons, operations on dining-room tables and terrifying Victorian treatments. But this was also an age of extraordinary medical progress. We discover how Joseph Lister helped save Victoria’s life, why the Queen’s use of chloroform during childbirth was revolutionary, and how royal enthusiasm for medicine helped usher in a new era.Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate WilliamsSeries Producer: Ben DevlinProduction Manager: Vittoria Cecchini Content Editor: Joseph PalmerExecutive Producer: Bella SoamesA Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular.Sign up to Palace Confidential, the FREE royals newsletter from the Mail's top experts. Delivered straight to your inbox every Thursday, it's the smartest way to stay in the royal inner circle. Just head to dailymail.co.uk/palaceconfidential to sign up today. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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About Queens, Kings, and Dastardly Things
Expert history with a wicked twist: Queens, Kings and Dastardly Things is the podcast that goes behind palace doors and beyond the balcony smiles, to uncover the stories that the history books have politely skipped. Queens, Kings & Dastardly Things reveals the schemers, lovers, plotters and even the pets who’ve made the British monarchy the world’s longest-running reality show. Hosts, Royal biographers Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams trace how power, passion and paranoia have shaped every crown. There are queens who ruled better than their husbands, and princes who partied harder than their people. We meet saints, sinners and those hovering somewhere in between – from the man formerly known as Prince Andrew to the less-vilified Richard III. Sometimes we get reflective: how monarchy survives scandal, how image-making began long before Instagram, and why royal women have always been the best crisis managers in the room. Other times we’re just here for the gossip: who wore what, who slept where, and who accidentally started a war over breakfast. Think of it as history with its crown slightly askew. If you like your royal stories with equal parts grandeur and chaos, step into the world of Queens, Kings & Dastardly Things because behind every coronation lies a cover-up, behind every portrait a scandal, and behind every great monarch… a very patient servant wondering how to get the blood out of the carpet.
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