Dan Snow's History Hit - Lady Hamilton: Nelson's Mistress

Episode Date: March 2, 2023

The Kim Kardashian of Georgian England; she was a young housemaid who became one of the most famous socialites in the Western world and stole the heart Lord Nelson. Emma Hamilton, born Amy Lyon, grew up in abject poverty and at 13 travelled to London from Wales, where became a service maid. She was enthralled by the beauty and glamour of the actresses in Covent Garden and would miss work to go see them, eventually getting herself fired. She ended up destitute on the street until self proclaimed doctor and showman James Graham put her on the stage at his Temple of Good Health. Although still a teenager, men would come to oggle her beauty. Eventually she found work as a prostitute and became a mistress for the upper echelons of British society. She was effectively bought by Sir Henry Featherstonehaugh and while with him, learnt social graces, how to read, write and ride. Portraits were painted of her, she operated as a diplomat during the French revolution and became a socialite about Europe.It was her relationship with Lord Nelson that gave her the greatest love affair and heartbreak of her life. It's said they had an electrifying chemistry and when Nelson hobbled into the Port of Naples in 1973, war-weary and sick she nursed him back to health. For years the pair enjoyed the highlife of the Enlightenment, inseparable, much to the disdain of the high society they mixed with. But, his death would mark the beginning of a steady decline- consumed by grief, addiction and debt, she died with just £10 in her pocket, some pawn receipts and just the clothes she was wearing.Professor Joanna Lewis is a descendent of Lady Emma Hamilton and takes Dan through the twists and turns of her truly extraordinary life.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!Download the History Hit app from the Google Play store.Download the History Hit app from the Apple Store.Produced by James Hickmann and Mariana Des Forges, edited by Matthew Peaty and mixed by Dougal Patmore. 

Hello everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. Lady Emma Hamilton is one of the most fascinating figures in 18th and 19th century British European history. She was born to illiterate parents, lived a life of rural poverty, rose to become the darling of the Prince Regent, sat at the very pinnacle of British society, married a knight of the realm, took part in great affairs of state, took part in the Game of Thrones, helped save the Neapolitan royal family, became the lover of Britain's greatest admiral, Nelson. Yet she died in poverty, addicted to drugs and alcohol in 1815 in Calais. Lady Emma Hamilton is a fascinating figure through which to look at the 18th century, both elite culture, but also what life was like for women,

for normal people walking the streets, how hard it was, how fragile and the compromises, the decisions that people had to make to survive. I've got Joanna Lewis. She's a professor in the Department of History at the London School of Economics. She's actually a specialist in modern Africa and the European imperial carve-up of Africa. But she's agreed to talk to me about Lady Emma Hamilton. I'll tell you why. Because she discovered that she is a descendant of Emma and Nelson. Just imagine for a second, having the blood of Nelson and Emma Hamilton in your veins. I mean, unbelievable. It's the dream right there.

And so Joanna has come on to tell us all about her illustrious forebear, the very misunderstood, but fascinating, Emma Hamilton. Enjoy. T-minus 10. Atomic bomb thank you very much for coming on the podcast. My pleasure. I'm delighted to be here. Thanks for asking me. Just tell the audience, at her peak, how famous was Lady Emma Hamilton? Well, if you think of Kim Kardashian crashing the internet, then you've got a little bit of a taste of how famous she was. In Britain, in Europe, she had a face that everybody knew about.

in Europe. She had a face that everybody knew about. So she was probably at her peak, one of the most well-known women in the Western world. So it didn't begin like that. What do we know about her early life? Oh my goodness. Well, her early life, it could not have been more humble and more difficult. She was born Amy Lyon on the 26th of April 1765. And the small village of Ness, where she was born in Cheshire, which is 12 miles from Liverpool, it was described in the 1850s as, and I quote, primitive. So that means minus hovels. One in three children died in infancy. And things got worse when her father, who was a blacksmith, died when she was just a few months

old. So her mother had to take her young daughter and move to Flintshire in North Wales, where the grandmother helped bring her up. But again, poverty was awful. Shortages of food. It was in effect a country slum. Mud brick walls, rags over the window. And the grandmother was the only breadwinner and she would sell coal at the side of the road. So it was grim. She sounds like she was lucky to survive childhood. Absolutely. Very, very lucky. She was the daughter of illiterate parents. And if she did go to school, I don't think it would have been very much or for very long because at the age of 12, she was put into domestic service for a surgeon and his family in Chester.

And so that would have been her lot, empty in commodes and chamber pots and just basically all day, keeping the rooms free from soot, from the low quality coal. And we know that she didn't have a very good education, but she crucially understood the impact of that because at 19, she lamented, if only I'd had an education, what a great woman I might have become. What's attested about her? Did anyone leave an account of her in her teenage years? We do have some reports from those who employed her. I mean, she was not very good at being a servant. She dared to fail, as one biographer has said. She wasn't very good at all those jobs,

but she was already growing up to be very strong, very beautiful. And I think crucially, we often underestimate, you know, the role perhaps of women in her life and her mother. Her mother had been very strategic, and she had gone up to the local big house and got scraps of food she got friendly with the butler make of that what you want and so Emma had been very well fed so she never lacked nutrition so she was strong she was beautiful is this a world in which actually your beauty your kind of physicality was very dependent on childhood nutrition and and obviously your health.

Yeah, I think you're absolutely bang on there. And because she's known later for this luxurious thick mane, this wonderful translucent skin, you know, perfect teeth. I think her mother, you know, was really important in how she made sure that Emma had lots of protein, had lots of fresh vegetables. And I think she was really loved by her mother and her grandmother. She was really nurtured. However, of course, you know, the wife, a mistress in a house, when she's got a servant like this, remember, she's 12, 13 at this time when she's working in these houses, very, very vulnerable. But we know that one mistress described her as simply a fat Welsh girl, just up from the country, capable of nothing but scrubbing and scouring with no desire to learn anything.

What's the turning point? Did she get taken to London or something? The big turning point, I think, is just her chutzpah, her bravery. So she gets sacked, obviously, from this gig. And she makes the big decision, aged just 13. You know, for those of us who know 13-year-olds, oh, my God, it's so young. She travels to London, takes her five days, manages to avoid capture, sexual assault, and, you know, being immediately pimped. And then in Trafalgar Square, she gets chosen to be a maid for a family there.

And so, again, we see her working in service, a very dangerous occupation for a young woman. But the turning point again here is that she goes to Covent Garden. She runs off in the evening with a fellow maid and they go and watch the actresses there. And they are enthralled, you know, the makeup, the beauty, the treading of the boards. And so guess what? She gets sacked again and she's turned out. Yeah, it's here where things could have gone very, very badly. And they really did for a while, because although she works for a while as a maid to one of the famous actresses, that job folds and she's out on the streets. At one point, she's seen selling fruit and veg in a barrel wearing wooden shoes. And we also know,

she sort of admitted herself that she has to turn to prostitution. She describes herself later on as necessity forced me to fall from virtue, but my sense of virtue was never overcome. It's an amazing turn of phrase there. Yeah. How then does she begin climbing the pretty hostile social ladder of Georgian England? Whoa, I mean, she is lucky. Because, you know, it's a very seedy world here with a lot of predatory males. And the first sort of rung up the seedy ladder, if you like, it's a very seedy world here with a lot of predatory males. And the first sort of rung up the seedy ladder, if you like, towards some kind of security is that a man, a quack, you know,

called Dr. Graham, sets up this temple of good health and he sets her up on stage as this goddess of good health. And so men will pay money to watch her. So she's sort of the equivalent of Georgian Viagra, I think. She's this sensuous young girl with long hair. She's in diaphanous clothes. And so she becomes this figure of health, going back to her beauty and her voluptuousness. She's the picture of youthful good health. And she also then comes to the notice of a local female brothel owner. In exchange for, in effect, becoming her prisoner, she gets access to the best clothes, you know, makeup done, hair done, and also to her very, very wealthy clients. Again, this is a game changer. So that's interesting. Do we know how he came across her and selected her? I think she'd been on the street and we go back to, you know, what is a fundamental feature of

her that is important to recognise and that is just her beauty, her just natural beauty and good looks. And as you said earlier, you know, this is a time of ill health a lot of people don't make it a lot of people are scarred or pockmarked but you know she was literally in rude health and she's on the streets and she gets noticed first of all by this so-called you know doctor of good health it's actually probably a bit pervy what he does but anyway it brought her then to the attention her beauty of this high-class pimp she knows that this is that emma is somebody that her clients are going to really appreciate at this point she's how old she's probably at this point 15 14 15 god it's amazing it's astonishing it? Yeah. How many didn't make it?

Yeah. Yes, exactly. We're here celebrating her life and talking about her and all of her peers, all of the people that she would have been serving alongside, if that's the right verb, would have lived very different lives, I think. Yeah, absolutely. And her beauty draws her to the attention of Sir Harry Featherstone Hoare, who, villain of the piece possibly, let's see what we make of him.

He, in effect, bought her from the Madame for his Sussex estate as a piece of beautiful adornment. It's straight out of Thomas Hardy, this, isn't it? It's absolutely extraordinary. It is. And he had these legendary sort of parties, stag parties, and it's alleged she danced naked on the table for him. She became his mistress because he was enchanted. You know, her beauty was magnetic and there was nobody quite, you know, her equivalent. So it did go

well in some ways for her because, as we've said, she wanted to learn. So it's here that she learns for the first time to read and write. She also learns how to horse ride, which she loves. And she starts to learn social graces. And lucky for her, he preferred hunting and shooting. So that gave her a little time away from him. But disaster. She becomes pregnant. And what does Sir Harry do? Well, he turfs her out and she has to return to her family home of Howardon in North Wales, where she gives birth to a little girl in 1782. Her mother and grandmother, of course, don't turn her out, so this is important. And she's destitute at 16, however, an ex-prostitute, a married woman with a baby.

Again, she's very clever, she's very strategic, she doesn't give up, and she can now write. So she writes a letter to one of Sir Harry's friends who she's bonded with when she was there, the Honourable Charles Greville. Now, Greville is the second son of the Earl of Warwick, and he agrees to help her, but she must do what he says. She must give up the baby, and he puts her in a small house in Edgware Road. She becomes his property, and he's a bit of a control freak. He controls what she does, how she speaks, what she wore. Also, there's more education going on here. So it's a bit creepy. We don't really know the degree of perhaps threat and coercion involved.

But it was like Operation Mistress for him. And is this the point at which we might recognise Lady Emma in her own life? Because she was painted in a series of extraordinarily beautiful paintings by George Romney. Did Greville make that connection? Absolutely. After three years, he was quite happy with his work, if you like. And so he starts to introduce her to some of his artistic and more bohemian friends. And it's in 1782 that this life-changing moment happens when she meets George Romney. Now, he's also a man of a certain age for whom a teenage beauty, you know, is rather lovely to behold. But he is Britain's, you know,

best portrait painter at this time. And he has a love of Italian Renaissance, classical antiquity. at this time. And he has a love of Italian Renaissance, classical antiquity. And as you say, he paints her in all these different poses. I mean, he's almost got OCD towards her. So she is this international celebrity now because of the way in which he's presented her in his artwork that gets reproduced in postcard form, in print form, Sybil, Cassandra, Titania, all these classical figures where she is showing emotion, learning those actress skills that she had observed. She puts them into practice. And all these classical figures now she is sort of breathing new life into. And he is simply enchanted with her beauty and he paints her again and again and again. But it's important to also recognise that there were women painters at the time,

for example, Elisabeth Vigée, who also painted her and circulated her portrait around Europe. So, you know, Emma had presence as well in Europe, not just in Britain. You listen to Dan Snow's History. We're talking about Lady Emma Hamilton, Nelson's lover, and much else besides. More after this. Why were medieval priests so worried that women were going to seduce men with fish that they'd kept in their pants? Who was the first gay activist?

And what on earth does the expression sneezing in the cabbage mean? I'll tell you, it's not a cookery technique, that's for sure. Join me, Kate Lister, on Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex, scandal and society. A podcast where we will be bed hopping throughout time and civilisation to bring you the quirkiest and kinkiest stories from history. What more could you possibly want? Listen to Betwixt the Sheets today, wherever it is that you get your podcasts. A podcast by History Hit. So so she's becoming a european celebrity remarkable what does greville this contribution they're not great for the controlling weird uh lover if that's the right word you're not wrong there greville was actually now getting rather worried because, you know, she's got all these aristocratic figures at her feet.

She's an international celebrity. So he's getting a bit worried because not only has he got massively in debt, but he's now under pressure to get married. And it's definitely not going to be to Emma. In effect, he's very conniving and he arranges for her to marry his uncle, Sir William Hamilton. Sir William Hamilton is recently widowed. He's aged 60. Emma is 26 at this point. with Sir William. He is in Naples. I think he should just spend some time there, take some time out. Of course, it's permanent as far as Grenville is concerned, and Emma is devastated. She's absolutely in love with Grenville, and also Romney is absolutely devastated as well. So she gets sent off to stay with him. And for Sir William, it is, of course, love at first sight. He's been described as an amiable voluptuary. Well, I had to look up that word. I thought it was something to do with man boobs. Actually, it's somebody who's devoted to

luxury and sensual pleasure, sort of high living. So his classical taste, he had a great collection of art, and she was his ideal then of female beauty. And it's here that she develops these poses, where she goes on stage called the attitudes. I don't know if you've heard about those. Yes, the attitudes. I went to an exhibition once, and I suddenly realised that I was basically Lady M. Hamilton, because she just took sort of, she she would act but in sort of mute, just take these heroic poses on the stage or these sort of romantic poses. And I suddenly realised I'd made a whole TV career doing that at China. In fact, you saw me on the stage the other day. You probably can agree with this, but I realised I've got more in common with Lady Emma than I thought. Well, I didn't see you wearing a diaphanous toga that was see-through.

It's not come to that yet, and I hope it won't. But she would be statuesque. It was called tableau vivant, where she would pose as these great classical figures, you know, juge her hair, maybe alter her drapes, you know, risque, of course. I mean, it's not everybody who's doing this and getting away with it. But, you know, Sir William gave her respectability. And as His Majesty's envoy in the court of Naples, you know, he gave her social standing and an opportunity to become friends with Queen Caroline of Naples and Sicily. And he also gives Emma a chance to learn and develop her intellect.

At this point, she's fluent in Italian and French, but she's also very fun and frivolous. I'm sure she can tell a good joke. She likes to have a laugh. So again, this is hugely defining. And in the 18th century, obviously we talk, we imagine a very stratified world, but there are examples through acting, through this kind of thing, of women fighting their way into the aristocracy. Like it's not, although I'm sure it would have raised eyebrows, that it's not, she's not super unique, that there was precedence for this kind of mobility. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. It's important to remember that. However, it was quite bounded. You know, if she'd stayed respectable marriage to Sir William, but the problem for her and her reputation with regard to wider society is that she always goes

one step further because I think, of course I would, you know, because of her natural ability. because of her natural ability. And here, for example, then, classic example, the big, big moment, is that she is able to perform a role of intelligence gathering, and she acts as a diplomat. I mean, you would know more about this than me, but it's the time of the French Revolution. It's a time of great upheaval. And I always thought, you know, Italy, surely, you know, this is not, you know, Naples, a bit of a backwater. But actually, it becomes very important and very strategic. So again, she is going above her station. And also, we know that she's behaving then quite badly. Well, in what respect is she behaving badly? I think we might say she's behaving, having a rather good time. She's having a very, very good time. And she is having such a great time because the hero of the moment,

the hero of the hour, Rear Admiral Horatio Nelson, rolls into town, but, you know, rolls into port. And this is really such an extraordinary moment. It's a high point in many ways of her life, meeting him. But also, tragically, it is the beginning of the end as well. It's one of those paradoxical, tragic encounters. And she becomes his mistress. It was pretty electr electrifying they were into each other i've got chills they're multiplying yeah just thinking about it absolutely you know he was quite battered and bruised wasn't he at this time when he came back from the battle of the nile and

and limped into the port of naples he was really unwell he'd had lost an arm, his eyesight was fading, he was very thin, and she nursed him back to health. She literally scooped him up in her arms, which were quite substantial by this time. She became the love of his life, and she became mistress to the greatest military hero of the age. Could could she get any more famous hashtag infamous there's then some fairly complicated politics that goes on in naples i mean she was very close to the royal family wasn't she got nelson to behave pretty badly and i way way overstepping his well i guess his orders his sort of permissions from the british government he intervenes in kind of neapolitan politics and the revolution there and stuff, partly down to her influence over him.

Yes, I mean, that makes sense. You know, she had really got into his good books by allegedly, through Queen Caroline, arranging food to go to the fleet when it had just defeated the French. They were very short of supplies. Queen Caroline had given her a platform, had given her respectability, had accepted her at court. So, you know, she kind of owed her. So, yeah, she did work through Nelson. And that's quite a controversial period of his life. And I think, you know, as a result, he's recalled home.

Possibly that was the reason why. And does she go with him? Absolutely. The three of them go back home together, Sir William. Including her husband. Oh, yeah. I mean, he also loved her. And he also, you know, loved Nelson.

As you know, you know, Nelson inspired, you know, such adoration in men, you know, and women. He was a total hero. So they go back together and Nelson writes, she is one of the very best women in this world. She is an honour to her sex. Her kindness is more than I can express. And he says, I am bringing home a most faithful, honourable heart. So I think it's good to just reflect on her character at this point. He hadn't just fallen for a floozy, you know, who will see through clothing when she struck a pose, this, you know, voluptuous image of good health when, you know, he was broken, no upper teeth,

prematurely aged. I think there was a genuine appreciation of her kindness and generosity, which we will see again coming through later on. So the husband doesn't mind that much. Does he know about the affair or does he just not really, is it ignorant or does he not really care? He's too busy with his Pompeii relics. Yeah, the equivalent of a sort of garden shed he had, I'm sure, in terms of his interest. But don't forget, he was quite old at this point and they managed to keep certain things from him because as they come back, it's clear that Emma is now pregnant with Nelson's child.

You know, Sir William, I think, just puts up with it. I mean, he's lampooned in the press, you know, for being this ridiculous figure that is allowing this to go on. But his health is also failing. And when the three of them set up house together in London, Emma remains, of course, devoted to him, nurses him during his illness. And, you know, he dies in her arms with Nelson there as well. So, yeah, it's a menage a trois, quite an interesting relationship. But Nelson wasn't going to give her up. She wasn't going to give him up. So it just carried on.

Nelson's wife also lived nearby, we should say, and he decided to, he gave her up. Yes. At this point, as they say. So Lady Emma is now a widow, but Nelson is not, of course. So Nelson's separated, but he can't marry her. Absolutely. His wife doesn't want to let him go. And of course, although they don't have children, he has lots of extended family. And he comes under some criticism.

I think the ambassador's wife of Naples described how he was led around by Lady Hamilton like a keeper with a bear. And she is seen as vulgar and in couth. She still has a regional accent and there are all these bawdy tales. But they live openly together in Piccadilly, in the house where Horatio is born. Eventually, of course, the wheels start to come off. And what is so awful for Emma, because she relies on Nelson so much, I mean, she's massively in love with him, but he gives her this, you know, respectability.

They go out together, they go touring the country, they are fettered wherever they go, but you know, that costs money. And so she's living the lifestyle, dishing out the cash, And so she's living the lifestyle, dishing out the cash, trying to be sort of more generous and more opulent than their social equivalent, trying to prove herself. And she's getting more and more in debt. And then what's awful for her is that in 1803, Nelson gets called back to sea. So they've got a daughter. He's going to sea to command the Mediterranean fleet. War's broken out again. There was a brief period of peace, but war's broken out again. And is that a big problem for her if he's not around? Absolutely. She's incredibly vulnerable. So she's

putting on more weight. Her anxiety is escalating that she's never going to see him again. She's turning to gambling. She's turning to drink. Yes, she's still got that beautiful countenance, but her looks and her health are fading. We know that she is anxious about him. She writes to him, thinking that she's never going to see him again and says, you are the dearest husband of my heart. You are all in this world to your dear Emma. And again, in the letters, we see an equivalent tenderness, you know, for him. She has this premonition that she will never, ever see him again. And of course, she doesn't, because we know that the Battle of Trafalgar,

he gets mortally wounded. And when she's told about this she cannot speak she cannot cry for 10 hours and then she is incapacitated with grief not just for days not just for weeks but for months nelson had requested that the state look up look after her in the event of his death just for the battle of trafalgar he'd written quite a lot really why he's worrying about her the state i'm matt lewis and i'm dr alan or janaga and in gone medieval we get into the greatest mysteries the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history we're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings and Popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit,

wherever you get your podcasts. Did not look after her at all. Do you think she knew that his death meant ruin for her? I think possibly it was more about literally being in love, infatuation, adoration, but I'm sure there is a general sense absolutely of vulnerability. The extent of her financial vulnerability needn't have been so great.

For example, Sir William's estate, Grenville, if you remember, who engineered the marriage with Sir William Hamilton, he didn't provide enough for her. He didn't settle her debts. He did not also ensure that a generous pension was transferred to her. Sir William Hamilton never mentioned in dispatches back to the Foreign Office of just how much work Emma had done behind the scenes diplomatically with regard to the fleet and nursing Nelson back to health. So she never had a pension in her own right. But I think on the other side of that, of course, is her spending. She was desperate to keep Nelson's family in her favour. She was paying for school fees. She was paying for parties, for holidays. She couldn't let go of the house, the large house that her and Nelson had had. So it's really, really sad that I think partly because of the sexism of the time

and the laws and also the prejudice that she wasn't seen as a woman who should be taken care of and financial provision was not as it should have been. She was excluded from his enormous funeral. The establishment really start to try and elbow her out of the scene, don't they? Absolutely. It really is the beginning of the end. Within three years of his death, she'd become £15,000 in debt, which was a hell of a lot of money. But she's also getting scammed. His family are still willing to accept money from her. She's far too generous to relatives and to family. And, you know, of course, she's used to the high life and, you know, her spending is, you know, even more than mine. It's really, really awful because between 1811 and 1812, she's in a debtor's prison, an open prison, because of the fact that she can't pay her creditors.

And in July 1814, she flees from London to get away from her creditors and she flees to Calais. She just has 50 pounds in her purse. She's broken hearted, beaten down by the way society has turned away from her, crippled by stomach pains, drinking heavily. She's addicted to laudanum. She still has the loyalty of her old housekeeper and some of her maids and her daughter Horatia is still with her. But sadly, illness overtook her. And at the age of 49, she died over a couple of days, you know, very horrible, painful death of organ failure. This is on the 15th of January, 1815. She has just £10 in her

pocket, a couple of porn receipts and clothes that she was wearing. That's all she had. Yeah, it's very sad. She'd been selling, she sold any memento she had of Nelson, didn't she, to try and get by her and her daughter? Yes, she was always mindful of what would happen to Horatia. She was also criticised in the press for publishing letters. So yeah, she was seen as somebody who had, you know, really brought Nelson down, that she had paraded in his glory. One nasty comment as well for the time is that she had lowered the name of the English matron to that of a Parisian fisherwoman. Harsh. But these powerful men picked her up and dropped her as they pleased. The Prince Regent was obsessed with the Feats of George IV at times and would go and dine at Merton and then he'd refuse to sort of answer her letters at other times I mean she it must have been very

I think we might say gaslighting these days you know to be both to have these powerful men obsessed with you and declare their undying love and then just completely ignore you a year or two later it's I mean it must have been so difficult yeah that's a really good way of pushing it actually I hadn't thought of that. And I think that really underscores, I think, the decline, really, the illness, the stomach pains. You know, we would call it trauma now. But as you say, the rise and fall, to live with such precariousness and also to have fallen in love so deeply and madly, and then to have had the trauma of that death, you know, knowing that he died in

the way that he did. So I suspect that, you know, the drinking, the excess, the desire for affection from, you know, his family, it was all part of, you know, what we might see as a psychological impact, you know, of those kinds of horrible experiences. What happened to her daughter, their daughter? Well, her daughter could never acknowledge publicly that she was the offspring of Lord Nelson and Lady Emma Hamilton. Of course, as is the case, when you're an offspring of such chaos and such excess and such drama, she went completely the other way. And Horatia did not look like her mother. She looked very much like her father. There is this extraordinary photograph of her not long before I think she eventually passed away in the 1860s because photography

was taking off there. And she is a spitting image, really, of her father. And she married a vicar, the Reverend Philip Ward, and they went on to have nine children. Are you descended from one of those children? My father and his uncles always told the story when we were growing up that we were descended. And I must say, whenever he told that story, my mother and my various aunts would roll their eyes and say, oh, for goodness sake, not this old story again. But to their credit, when they all retired, my Uncle Brian led the charge and he went to the archives, you know, births, marriages, death. He plotted that family tree and it looks like it's true.

And of course, they were delighted. They focused on the Nelson side naturally. And they would have these Nelson day outs where they'd wear the Nelson insignia ties and they'd go and see HMS Victory and go to various pubs where Nelson and Lady Emma Hamilton had stayed. So it was a very important part of my childhood, actually. And I love them for it because it gave me this love of history as well as a scepticism. Are we in a place now where, I mean, she was despised through the Victorian period and the sort of very proper male historians writing about her. Are we in a place now where we can view her life far more even-handedly? I would absolutely say so. There's been a lot of work to rehabilitate the sort of sexism,

that lens of misogyny that she was subjected to. And as you mentioned earlier, there was this marvellous exhibition of portraits of her at the National Maritime Museum a few years ago, and that focused on seduction and celebrity. However, I think it's also important not to underestimate the world in which she lived with regard to what was done to women, the withholding of education, how she was subject to very coercive male control. But it was her character, as well as her beauty, that managed to rescue her from an otherwise very dire situation. And I think we're also in a position to acknowledge the role of those important female friendships, the importance of the love of her mother and her grandmother, and the female friendships that she forged and the loyalty

of women that she was able to engineer. It's one of the most remarkable lives actually of recent British history. Thank you so much Joanna Lewis for coming on and talking about it. My pleasure. It's been absolutely wonderful to speak about her. Thank you so much. you