5x60 HD |
Like A Shot Entertainment
| UKTV / Viasat
Their iconic images, captured in famous portraits and paintings by celebrated artists, are part of the very fabric of national culture. In carefully-arranged poses, the Kings and Queens of history still look down upon us today - they are powerful symbols of bygone ages. Which is all well and good. But actually, they were just human beings, with the same ticks and foibles, bad habits and weaknesses, wants and needs as the rest of us. That’s what makes them interesting. Not so much the dates, the diplomacy, the politics or the acts and treaties; more the lovers, the personal traits, the everyday stuff. Charles II may have looked a treat when having his portrait painted – but what was going on beneath the robes and the wigs? And Louis XIV, who supposedly a three-times-during-his life bather – so why build a Turkish bath at Versailles for his personal use? Who better to find out and tell us than Tracy Borman, joint Chief Curator of the Royal Palaces and the face of 2016’s The Private Lives of the Tudors. These programmes are not conventional biographies – quite the opposite. We’re not going to hear in detail about what each monarch meant to history. That’s not what the shows are about. No, we’ve asked Tracy to carry on the good work she began in the Tudor series – to once more get at the nitty-gritty, the down-and dirty aspects of each of our monarchs. They’re the bits that people find most fascinating – the health, the hygiene the frailties and the habits of men and women born to live extraordinary lives which somehow had to accommodate the mundane and the matter-of fact. After all, illnesses and diseases are no respecter of power or position and human urges don’t pick and choose who they visit. So it’s off to the bedchambers and the backstairs rooms of the royal palaces with Tracy as our guide to discover what really went on in The Private Lives of the Monarchs.
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3rd birthday drinks from 5.30 pm Monday 5th October
