Dan Snow's History Hit - A History of Sex for Sale

Episode Date: September 22, 2021

Sometimes referred to as the world's oldest profession sex workers have been part of human society for as long as recorded history, but how have societies viewed them through the ages? In the episode, Dan is joined by Dr Kate Lister to find out how the treatment of sex workers has changed, whether the Victorians were really prudes, what you might find in a Roman brothel, fleshy thighs and how conditions for sex workers could be improved today.Dr Kate Lister is a lecturer in the School of Arts and Communication at Leeds Trinity University. Kate primarily researches the literary history of sex work and curates the online research project, Whores of Yore, an interdisciplinary digital archive for the study of historical sexuality. Her new book Harlots, Whores & Hackabouts: A History of Sex for Sale is published in October. Warning! This episode contains adult themes and may not be suitable for younger listeners.

This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History. Very, very happy to have Dr Kate Lister back on the podcast.

She's a lecturer at Leeds Trinity University. She researches the literary history of sex work. She also curates Whores of Yore, a digital archive of the study of historical sexuality and massive online social media presence. She's an absolutely fantastic historian and communicator. Her history of sex was brilliant. I did a podcast on that last year and she's back this year. She's got a new book out on the history of sex work, even more brilliant. And it's been great getting her back on and talking. There are lots of adult themes in this podcast. You may not want to listen to it if you are listening with young children, but if you're not, then fill your boots. And when you finish listening

to it, folks, don't forget to go to History Hit TV. We can get all these podcasts without the ads, no ads at all. And you also get hundreds of hours of history documentaries on there. It's all happening at History Hit TV. Go to historyhit.tv now. You get 30 days free. But in the meantime, here is Dr. Kate Lister. Enjoy.

Kate, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. It's my pleasure. Thank you so much for asking me on. It's always said to be the, what's that cliche? It's the second oldest professional, some of that. What selling sex is it as old as humanity itself? It comes from Rudyard Kipling. He was the first one that coined the phrase, the world's oldest profession in his little novelette on the wall, I think it was. But it's not the world's oldest profession because there's many cultures around the world throughout history that haven't had any money. So they haven't had any professions at all. So it can't be. It has been

suggested by various anthropologists that the oldest profession is either the medicine man or the midwife, because those figures tend to be universally found in almost every culture around the world. Whereas someone selling sex, the sex worker is not. But it's a very, very old profession. It's certainly as old as money. We could definitely say that. I'm really struck in your book how the attitudes towards sex workers throughout recorded history have encompassed every single different thing an attitude can be. From like celebratory to absolute condemnation, wanting to kill them. It's extraordinary. Yes. And they always seem to circle back as well. That's the other thing. Although there's a huge range of different attitudes, there's evidence that some sex

workers were viewed almost as holy in the ancient world, that they're kind of aligned with priestesses and goddesses. Although there's plenty of historians who will take me to task for that one. But then there's also plenty of evidence that sex workers were horribly treated in the ancient world as well. And the thing is, as diverse as these attitudes tend to be, in a weird way, we're still having the same debates and conversations around it today. People still panic about it. They worry about it. What should we do? Is it a moral issue? Is it a money issue? How can we control it? And what the authorities do to try and control it tends to be similar mechanisms throughout history. They punish. That's quite a well-established response to it. And the the punishments varied from everything

from excommunication through to death branding mutilation really horrible things and then there's zoning that's another tactic that gets deployed a lot it's like well all right you can do it but you can only do it here in this place that i've told you that you can do it or there's kind of like what the british have done throughout history which is, well, we know it goes on, but we're just not going to do very much. We're just going to pretend it's not happening. That's another tactic as well. But yeah, there's a huge range of responses, reactions, systems of regulation all throughout history that we keep circling back to in one way or another. It reminds me a little bit of that Dostoevsky quote when he says, you can judge the level of civilisation in a society, I'm misquoting him, by looking at the way it treats its prisoners.

And I think the same is true of sex workers, right? That is a very good point. I like that, Dan. Yes, I would say that because the figure of the sex worker tells us so much about the culture that they exist within, how they're viewed, how they're treated, because they are a very visible symbol and representation of a culture's attitude around sex and gender and women and all of these things and money. And whatever the culture is, it projects their attitudes onto that figure. So in cultures that are deeply patriarchal and have kind of a controlling narratives around women, it tends to get a lot of stigma with that as well.

And it's tied up with wealth a lot. It's so classist, a lot of this. Like all throughout history, there's been this real state of cognitive dissonance. And we still do it today, which is that if you're a sex worker, but you've got a client who has loads of money, then we'll discuss that in very, very different terms.

Then you're a courtesan. Then you're a paid mistress. Then, you know, you you're a courtesan then you're a paid mistress then you know you're a um an honest courtesan but if you're poor and if you're selling sex in a brothel then the narrative shifts again it's so interesting because i don't want to talk about the uk because you talk about so many different places at different times but in the uk we think we're super relaxed about sex now sex sells in our newspapers and our discourse we all talk about it and we're all like sex positive and yet we still have this kind of weird issue in our society around sex work don't we it's like it's legality it's like I don't even know if it's legal I don't even know I probably should know but is that something that just has

failed to catch up with zeitgeist? Or does it show that we're actually secretly much less relaxed and sex positive than we think we are? I think it's probably the latter of that. I think that what's really important at the moment and what shifted is that this is one of the first times in history where sex workers have been able to speak for themselves, where their voice isn't being co-opted or being written about or spoken about. If anyone wants to know about the sex worker rights movements, the ECP, the English Collective of Prostitutes, or SWARM, the Sex Worker Activist and Resistance Movement, are brilliant groups to go and look at and see their work. Sex work is legal in the UK. The buying and selling

of sex is legal. That's not illegal. But what we've done is, what we've done throughout most of history, is that we've got a very uneasy relationship with it. So we've criminalized activities around it. And we're not as comfortable as we think we are. And sex work seems to be a real flashpoint of that. And again, it shows our own attitudes. So for example, in the UK, it's illegal to work in a brothel, right? So then everyone kind of goes, oh, okay, that's fine. But then what's defined as a brothel? A brothel in British law is defined as any establishment that has more than one person selling sex from it. So that law in practice means that sex workers can't work together to stay safe, that they're forced to work on their own, which is a really dangerous

situation. And it doesn't help anyone stay safe. And we've got lots of things like that. And I think that you're absolutely right, is that when you actually look at our own attitudes around sex work we're not as comfortable with it as we like to think we are. Sex is everywhere you know you watch Game of Thrones or you see sex sells adverts and all the rest of it but it's a very particular type of sex that you're looking at and when when it comes to sex work, we're just not ready to have those conversations yet. For example, if anybody's watched porn, you've used the services of a sex worker. That person was paid to do that so you can consume that. You've used the services of a sex worker. But we just, we're not ready to have those conversations. We make it always, it's about someone else. Someone else is doing it. And it and so much shame and stigma heaped on it

it stifles any kind of conversation and that makes it really dangerous because it forces it underground and we need to talk about these things what are the places in history the societies the times that have a completely different attitude towards sex work take me on a little time machine here time machine let's have a think well do you know the time and place that has the most radically different attitude at the moment is right now, and it's New Zealand and New South Wales, because they've decriminalised sex work, which is slightly different from legalising. Legalising means you can do it, but only in the way that I say you can do it. Decriminalising is they've taken all laws pertaining to it away, so it's just protected by other laws. It's protected by worker laws. It's protected by, obviously, exploitation and abuse. They're already

illegal and will continue to be so. But that is a radical departure from throughout history, because that isn't an approach that has been utilised in history very often. You've got very, very different approaches to this. So if I take you back to medieval England, for example, medieval London, they deployed zoning. So it was in the area of Southwark, just across from the Thames, which was technically just outside the jurisdiction of the city. So it was where a lot of criminals and repudates and people that had been banished ended up. And that's where the sex work industry thrived, was in Southwark. And it was actually under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Winchester who collected money on all the brothels there so they were paying their tax debt to the Bishop and they were known as Winchester Geese so if you were in medieval

London you would go to what were known as the stews in that particular area of London so that's zoning that's where you can do it but you can only do it there and anyone caught doing it outside of that was punished quite severely you could be put in the stocks you could be paraded to the city if you were a repeat offender you could be banished or mutilated zoning happens all throughout history the italians were pretty big on it so in renaissance italy cities set up particular areas for sex work to happen in and it's got some benefits I suppose it kind of protects people-ish from horrible punishments but not really but if you look at some of these areas in Renaissance Italy they had bureaus that were set up just to deal with complaints from sex workers which was normally about large groups of men just coming walking around and being

annoying and a nuisance but it was a kind of a prototype union maybe from feeling generous so that was an approach as well so that's legally but what about culturally we'll talk about for the moment men using female sex workers because i suspect the answer might be quite different the other way around where has there been a culture where everyone's like yeah this is great everyone's just gonna get on with it crack on with it um i don't think there has you know because it's or it's tied up with money and it's tied up with class so there are points in history that you can go back to and you can see how certain sex workers are viewed very very differently so mistress to the king wasn't just a perk, that was an actual proper position at court.

It was an actual job description that you would go for. That's how normalised this was. So the kings of Europe would get married, of course they would, they would sign a legitimate issue, but it was fully expected that they would have their way with anyone that they wanted to. So they had royal mistresses. And these were hugely powerful positions at court, like you had the ear of the king. They were really, really influential. And these weren't viewed as seedy, horrible positions. These were viewed as very aspirational. So it's not so much that there was ever a point in history where you could go, well, everyone's got that right. There always seems to be stigma caught up with it, especially in a very patriarchal society that is capitalist as well.

It's the poorest people that have always been the most heavily stigmatized. I'd love to tell you that this time and this place absolutely nailed it and it was all brilliant, but I don't think that's ever happened. Hopefully we're moving towards it. That would be good. And I'm guessing the second half of my question about females using male sex workers, that is a whole separate adventure. That is a whole separate adventure. That is an area that has been very under-researched. There is current research going on at the moment to try and gather data on that because it absolutely does happen. And that's one of the other things about our understanding of sex work now and throughout history is it's very heteronormative. We immediately think of the

person selling sex is the woman and the person buying sex is the man that's just the way it must be but it's not and that obscures the experience of must be millions of people throughout history of the men that were selling sex the women that were buying sex the women that were selling sex to other women all of this would have been happening it's finding the evidence of it and the voices for it is very very difficult because it's been so heaped with shame throughout history people don't tend to record it or write about it unless it's an illegal context you know yeah well that's why I talked to you before for the history of sex podcast the source material so thin for you sex historians and I thought about keeping a

really detailed sex diary did you do it no i didn't because i'm too embarrassed in english see that's the problem and i think it would be insufficiently interesting as well she's going to bury it in the garden somewhere and someone will dig it up in 200 years and i'll be so pleased i know but you kept me thinking about that so you have you know if anyone's listening and you have done that please let us know keep a sex diary historians need you to do it there you go i've recently done a podcast about london during the wars and the culture going to shows music and then also sex as well you've got millions of young men just dumped on that city from all around the world with a bit of cash in their pockets what have you found out about that period um that period there's something about

war in the human psyche and i'm sure there are many psychologists who can explain to me what's going on maybe it's the threat of death maybe it's the fact that everything's so uncertain but there's something about war and sex that seem to go together i think it's this kind of astute like if you're going to ship young men out and they're going to have to pretty much walk into a cannon or a machine gun or whatever it is. Maybe they're not going to be too bothered about going to a brothel the night before. And there's a lot of money to be made because that's the biggest motivator for people selling sex is the money. And also, maybe it's just let them, right?

Right. But you know what? It was so conflicted, this in the First World War in particular. So there had never been a world war on this scale before. And every nation fighting very, very quickly realised that they were losing vast numbers of fighting men to venereal disease. Because venereal disease in 1918 is not like venereal disease now, where it's have an antibiotic and a few awkward phone calls. You would be hospitalised for four weeks, depending on what you'd contracted. If you had syphilis or gonorrhea, one of the treatments was kind of like to scour the penis repeatedly with like a wire brush and like disinfectant, but also to fill the bladder through the urethra full of a solution. Yeah,

it's horrible. You can't see Dan's face now, but it's a picture. To like fill the bladder up full of kind of disinfectant solutions and then kind of urinate it out. And you'd be in the hospital for up to four weeks. It was painful, it was humiliating and you were out of action for four weeks. So suddenly every nation fighting this war had to address, what on earth are we going to do about this? Because they're all having loads of sex for the exact reason that you've just said, why wouldn't you just let them? Just go on, just crack on. But the manpower lost to it was enormous. The Germans went very Teutonic discipline and decided that they would regulate this really severely.

So they assumed control of all the brothels in the towns that they occupied and instigated this forced examination system of all the women that they had registered, that forced them to register. And they'd be forcibly examined every two weeks, I think it was. And they gave their troops condoms, but they're kind of rubbish condoms because it was 1918, but instructions on how to use it. The Americans went completely the other way and decided that they would just shout at their troops, just don't do it, it's really bad.

And they sort of launched into this moral provelactics of just, they were going to bombard their troops with propaganda about diseased women, dirty women, the dangers of good time girls. And the treatment for venereal disease, as just described, it was designed to be humiliating and painful. So the Americans, they didn't issue condoms, they didn't issue advice apart from just don't do it. And the casualties for venereal disease were just off the scale because they're young they're going to war they might not come back you can understand that right yeah yes i was very struck in your book by how at various periods the first world war obviously is a huge advantage for french women often behind the lines but also women in british garrison towns, like when I

visited on Salisbury Plain the other day. Is there an opportunity for women as entrepreneurs, as well as sex workers, as people, is this an opportunity where they can own property, they can carve out an income, they can support themselves? I've always thought that that is the case. There's lots of reasons why sex workers are horrendously stigmatised out here, so we can pick them apart. But I think a really formative one is the fact that this was a line of work that offered women an opportunity to make their own money, to have some degree of agency, and to be able to make something of themselves. And I say that in the full knowledge that there are hideous exploitations and abuses that occur. But that's been true throughout history. What other job can you think of

that a girl born in the slums of London in the 15th century, 16th century, could grow up and become the most powerful woman in the country? I'm thinking of Nell Gwynne, for example. She was born in the slums of London. What other career opportunity? There aren't career opportunities for women. They're so limited. So the fact that you could sell sex and make a large amount of money in a small space of time, I've often wondered if that's one of the reasons that it's caught up with this kind of shaming of women taking agency. And you see that in history as well, when they've got zoned areas. So it was in medieval London. It was in Renaissance Italy is the brothels are almost always run by women. A matron is put in charge. So it was largely a woman's industry. And I've always wondered as well, is that one of the reasons why it's been so shunned is because it allowed women to not be in their place, to not be quiet and at home. And they kind of exist outside of that. And it gives them monetary power because they can earn a lot of money. I wonder.

You listened to Dan Snow's History Hit. We're talking about the history of sex work with Dr Kate Lister. More after this. This is History's Heroes. More after this. don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. I find talking about sex work really challenging because there's that aspect to it about agency, but there's also this idea that women turn to sex work because they are themselves the victims of abuse. They are in desperate financial situations or they are dependent on boyfriends,

lovers who then become pimps or whatever it is. So this idea of like victim versus someone in charge of their own destiny, I think comes through all the histories on this. It does, doesn't it? And the thing is, is that people are always very keen to try and make it one or the other. And what we've got to say is that all of these things are true at the same time. They're all true at the same time. There are people that have gone into sex work and have been able to make a lot of money and get some agency and become financially time. There are people that have gone into sex work and have been able to make a lot of money and get some agency and become financially stable. There are also people that have been forced into it. There are also people that have turned to it because their situations around them and poverty is so extent that they have turned to it through that. All of these things are true at

the same time. And that's one of the things that we don't really acknowledge when we're talking about sex work throughout history, is it's so densely layered and a complex experience that there isn't just one voice. There isn't. There's multiple allegiance, and that's still the truth today. People, when they talk about sex work, they want them to be the happy hooker stereotype or the horrendously abused and trafficked person and it's just so much more complex than that there are sex workers working today they're working quite voluntary and willingly or at least as much you can in a capitalist society because we've all got to sell something but they hate their job they don't like their job but that's all right there are loads of people that don't like their jobs but we make more demands on them like you couldn't possibly just be doing it and not liking it it's so complex that there isn't one version of this there are people that are

abused and trafficked and coerced in sex work as there are in many many professions the number one profession that people are trafficked into in the uk today is domestic slavery and agricultural slavery and in the same way that you've got farmers who absolutely love their job and are having a whale of a time, you've got people that are trafficked in and are virtual slaves. All these things are true. It's far more complex than we like to think of it. This is an obvious place where the history sheds so much light and important context on an incredibly contentious contemporary debate. What do you want to tell policymakers about the history of sex work? And how do you think they should think about that history?

The number one thing that I would tell them is that they need to listen to the sex workers themselves, because we're so lucky now that sex workers have fought hard enough and long enough and created a space for them to be heard. So I think that's the first thing that I'd say to someone is go and speak to the sex workers and listen to them the other thing is from just a historical point of view is look at all these attempts at legislation abolition punishment deterrence all these things that have been in place for as long as we've had records are long enough to document this thousands and thousands of years, and they have never worked. They don't work. You cannot shame, punish, stigmatise people from doing this. You can't. So what we need to do is start having a more open and honest conversation. I

always think that the conversation around sex work would be much more honest if all the policymakers had to show us their internet history before making the policy changes, right? I think that would change the conversation pretty quickly. And just be more honest about it. And look to New Zealand, which, since they have decriminalized sex work, sex workers can now unionize, they are much safer. And it hasn't stopped trafficking and abuse, because those things will happen, but they've been massively, massively reduced. And it's created an environment where those things can be found and located, and the perpetrators brought to justice. So what we need to do is get past this idea that we can just legislate it away,

get past this idea that it's nothing to do with us, because we're just a bit too embarrassed to actually talk about it, and actually listen to what the people who are selling sex say that's what i would say brilliant well they should listen to that now we're going to do the listeners questions bit so this is a bit so people want me to ask you let's do it so don't blame me if you think it's all crazy okay what is the best piece of hookup advice you've ever come across in the history of humans having sex with each other the best piece of hookup advice presumably conquer a vast empire and the question is like what's the best way to get laid throughout history i think it might be i have lots of money yeah that will overcome any social awkwardness physical

unattractiveness have loads of money there you go that's the best you need to be a historian to work that one out look at the contemporary world see there you go if i walked into a roman brothel right now what's the biggest surprise i would get is this i think someone's directing this at me if dan snow walked into a roman uh mary beard would be there going hi dad that would surprise you uh what would surprise you okay the size of it i think have you been to pompeii have you been to the brothel it's like a work shed isn't it it's tiny it's like a broom cupboard just a stone bench so i think the size of it would surprise you it might surprise you that not all the people working in there were slaves most of the people weren't slaves the graffiti written on the wall

gives their names and a lot of the time they've got family names attributed to them which isn't something that slaves have so that might surprise you what about a euphemism so something that sort of is kind of euphemistic more polite society you might something polite um i like the victorians called trousers sit down upon that was quite good the other thing the victorians did was they called the bottom the buttock the fleshy part of the thigh i really like that so it's like you're reading in dispatches and if somebody had been shot in the bottom they wouldn't say injured in the buttocks they would say he was shot in the fleshy part of the thigh. Yeah, I like that. Very good. What's the most ridiculous law about sex that was ever enacted? Oh, now then.

It might be one of those things that you read on the internet that's just not true, but I think dildos are still illegal in Texas or something absolutely deranged. Well, there's all kinds of crazy laws around sex, isn't there? I mean, the Puritans were pretty intense on any kind of adultery of any kind. But, you know, it's easy for us to laugh, but I'm pretty sure the Taliban's...

Yeah, there you go. You can see the repercussions of laws that are going to come in, right? So it's serious stuff. But there's plenty of daft laws throughout history of people attempting. There was a bill that was floated in the British Parliament that was considered making makeup illegal. It didn't get that far. There's some truth to that. That's an internet rumour, but there's some truth to it.

Were the Victorians really as prudish as we think they were? No, they exist in a state of this cognitive distance as well. The official party line with them is, right, everything's buttoned up, starched down. We call trousers sit-down-a-pons. We're very, very prim and proper. But if you just scratch the surface of it, they are absolute dirtbags. They really are.

You only have to look at the vast amounts of pornography that were being produced, photographic pornography, literary pornography. If you want to waste an hour, and don't forget to clear your internet history afterwards, you can read in its entirety one of the Victorian pornographic magazines, which is called The Pearl. And that was published for a year from 1889 to 1890. So if you just Google The Pearl erotic magazine,

you'll be able to read it. And you won't ever look at them the same way again. They're absolutely filthy. They really are. Obviously, Kate, this depends on your socioeconomic status, your sexual orientation, your gender. But when was the worst time in Britain? If you want to have sex, consensual sex with anyone,

when was the worst time? Or do you think it's huge peaks and troughs in people's ability to have sex? What I will say is the medieval period of this terrible reputation as being prudish and chastity belts and damsels in distress, that's not true at all. It wasn't like a feminist utopia, but they were much more laid back about sex than we thought they were. They had nude public bathing. They made jokes about sex all the time. It was really funny to them. It was the Victorians that did a lot of damage. They were the ones that kind of, you know, like really stigmatized sex so you wouldn't want to be caught having sex in a public scandal in the 19th century i don't think especially if you're a woman

because that could be pretty nasty and i'm thinking in particular one quack lunatic dr isaac baker brown who actually pioneered clitorectomies for women that he thought were overly sexed yeah we've heard that in your previous book. That was grim. I think my grandpa, who I never met, but he had to ask his father-in-law, who was a doctor, how to have sex. Oh, at least he asked. That's fascinating.

Where did people learn about this? Before the internet, before sex ed, before books were just widely available. Yeah, you'd have to ask, wouldn't you? I hope he helped him out and gave him a good diagram or something well some notes to take in my dad was born so i presume something went right uh what is the best bit of sexual graffiti you've ever come across oh there's some brilliant graffiti inside the brothels of pompeii i'm not going to attempt my latin now because it was just horrendous but my favorite bits of the latin the actual sex workers themselves they leave jokes for one another and one of the clients they refer to in latin but it translates as mr garlic farts

in the sense of like basically mr garlic farts was here that's pretty much what they wrote and i love that because it's still funny oh that's grim which famous historical figure would have the best tinder profile oh that's a good question that's good figure would have the best tinder profile oh that's a good question that's good who would have the best tinder profile uh man or woman well uh let's say man same man okay oh do you know um byron would he have what would his profile be he would have an amazing profile he would have an amazing profile. He would have an amazing profile, wouldn't he? He wouldn't be one of those ones that's just a picture of him holding a fish. Yeah, that's it. That happens a lot on Tinder.

That's a low bar. That's a low bar. Lots of pictures of men holding fish and saying things like, six foot, apparently that matters. They say that a lot, don't they? Okay. And then female, I guess i'm thinking um georgiana dutch devon showed up oh she would wouldn't she and some amazing pictures as well it's quite high

maintenance nell gwynn i think she's definitely one of my favorites the mistress of charles ii because she was funny she was really witty as well she was known as pretty witty nell so i think that whatever her tinder profile would be it would be funny oh my god something about love island if they had tv would love island a bit of popular concept through all eras of history i mean love and under stewart kings like does my head in that's some mental acrobatics of course it would of course it would be popular absolutely it would i mean isn't that in the odyssey anyway doesn't odysseus end up on that yeah exactly exactly shuda masks those off courtly plays all sound like love island to me the Odyssey anyway. Doesn't Odysseus end up on that? I think so. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Tudor masks,

those sort of courtly plays all sound like Love Island to me. Yeah. They'd have been up for that. Last three questions. If you could be a fly on a wall for any particular moment in history, what moment would that be? Oh, God,

throughout the entire history. I wouldn't want to be a fly on the wall, but I would have quite liked to have been at Woodstock. That's quite recent history, isn't it? I'd quite like to have run around in the nip and jumped in mud. That would have been good fun.

I'd like that. I'd like to have seen Janis Joplin there. Going back further, I would like to have met Queen Victoria. I'd like to have had a conversation with her about sex because she has this reputation of being so frumpy, but behind closed doors, there's quite a lot of evidence that she was a right little goer. And I just wanted to ask her some questions.

Which part of history would you least like to visit? I'd like to visit it all. It depends on the context. Like, am I being a fly on the wall again or have I got to try and live there? Fly on the wall. You're assuming that you're not going to die. I've just got to like wander around. I'll probably go for Nazi history because it's too harrowing. Huge respect for the people that can research that, but it's just too awful. Not a good scene. If you hadn't't been a historian what would you have been i always wanted to be a special effect makeup artist for reasons i don't quite understand but yeah i wanted to do that so maybe i've done that the other job that i've always wanted and i didn't realize i wanted it until

i was already being a historian i want to be the person that recreates faces from skulls i want that job that's historian adjacent. Right, okay, so different. Okay, maybe I'd just be... No, I think that's good. I'm saying you could do that one day. I could do that. Or maybe I'd just be a massive whore and a courtesan.

That's a high-class one, yeah. Well, there you go. You see, now you're getting all... You see, you're saying, I'd rather be a courtesan. That reminds me of Russian exiles, Russian refugees in Paris. The posh ones called themselves chauffeurs and the others called themselves drivers. There we go.

We're always at it. We're always at it. We're all in the marketing, aren't we? Yeah. Kate, thank you so much. What's the new book called? The book is called Harlots, Whores and Hackabouts, A History of Sex for Sale.

Great, thanks so much. Thank you. I feel we have the history upon our shoulders. All the traditions of ours, our so much. Thank you. I feel we have the history on our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished. Thanks folks for listening to this episode

of Dan Snow's History. As I say all the time, I love doing these podcasts. They are the best thing I do professionally. I feel very lucky to have you listening to them. If you fancied giving them a rating review, obviously the best rating review possible would be ideal. It makes a big difference to us. I know it's a pain, but we'd really, really be grateful.

And if you want to listen to the other podcasts in our ever-increasing stable, don't forget we've got Susanna Lipscomb with Not Just the Tudors. That's flying high in the charts. We've got our medieval podcast, Gone Medieval, the brilliant Matt Lewis and Kat Jarman. We've got the ancients with our very own Tristan Hughes, and we've got warfare as well, dealing with all things military.

Please go and check those out wherever you get your pods. This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts.