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If Walls Could Talk

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What to expect

Bloomsbury presents If Walls Could Talk by Lucy Worsley, read by Kerry Gilbert

From the Joint Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces and BBC Television series including Lucy Worsley: Mozart’s London Odyssey and Six Wives with Lucy Worsley, available on Netflix.

“Worsley is a thoughtful, charming, often hilarious guide to life as it was lived, from the mundane to the esoteric.” —The Boston Globe

Why did the flushing toilet take two centuries to catch on? Why did medieval people sleep sitting up? When were the two “dirty centuries”? Why, for centuries, did rich people fear fruit?

In her brilliantly and creatively researched book, Lucy Worsley takes us through the bedroom, bathroom, living room, and kitchen, covering the history of each room and exploring what people actually did in bed, in the bath, at the table, and at the stove—from sauce stirring to breast-feeding, teeth cleaning to masturbating, getting dressed to getting married—providing a compelling account of how the four rooms of the home have evolved from medieval times to today, charting revolutionary changes in society.

Critics Review

An unpretentious history of mundane things made remarkable, this amusingly straightforward treatise can't help hitting close to home.
O, The Oprah Magazine
Anecdotes from Ms. Worsley's experiences enliven If Walls Could Talk... The prose is brisk and effervescent, as topics zip past at remarkable speed.
The Wall Street Journal
History would be a much more popular subject in school if all historians could be as informative and entertaining . . . Worsley brings 800 years of domestic history to surprisingly rambunctious life.
The Dallas Morning News
A combination of fascinating and hilarious.
New York Post
Author Lucy Worsley
Narrator Kerry Gilbert
Duration 10 hours and 7 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9798260200940
Format Audiobook
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing
Genre European history, General and world history, Relationships and families: advice and issues, Social and cultural history, Stationery and miscellaneous items
Availability US

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