Thanks for the questions. And I see some of you have already read my book Jane Austen At Home. You are people with taste and intelligence, and I salute you. The rest of you, you know what to do.

Watch out for our BBC2 documentary on Saturday night - Jane Austen: Behind Closed Doors at 9pm. I've heard there is some football on, but you don't want to watch that.

Bye!

I have given people paranormal experiences at Hampton Court. Our curators office has a back door that opens on to a room called "the Haunted Gallery". Sometimes when we pop out, it freaks people out. I have not seen a ghost because *whispers* I'm sorry to tell you ghosts don't exist. I'm much more afraid of serial killers.

I am tempted by the tea.

My family history is very disappointing. People often ask me if I am related to the Duchess of Kent, who was born a Worsley, and I have to watch their faces fall when I say no. Nor am I related - and I am truly sad about this - to the Georgian "naughty" Lady Worsley, who had an epic divorce case.

In. I like to think of an intellectual in the world of football.

I haven't - but I have tried on a scold's bridal. It is a metal spike that immobilises the tongue of a mouthy woman.

Unnamed women.

The trouble is we tend to latch on to the people we know the names of. The Tudor kings and queens for example, as you rightly say. Celebrity sells.

What I hope to do is sometimes throw new light on someone we do know all about. What I long to do, but television doesn't always allow it, is to introduce you to people that you don't.

I am very fond of a lady called Mrs Cornwallis, who made Henry VIII's puddings. She is one of the few women at the Tudor court we know the names of. In lots of books you'll read that there were hardly any women at the Tudor court. But my brilliant colleague Eleri at Hampton Court, a textile historian, has discovered the whole community of laundresses, for example. They worked on the banks of the river outside the palace and no one needed to write down their names - so they didn't. But they were there! And deserve remembering.

I got it from a website called Etsy, which is secondhand clothes sellers from around the world. That dress was from the 1960s and the seller was in California.

I also have an Etsy-purchased red coat, which came with a lovely story. The coat belonged to the seller's late sister, who had bought it from a department store in a cold, Ohio winter, with her first ever paycheque in about 1958. She got it home and their father said: "You can't wear that red coat, you look like a strumpet!" I had the mink collar taken off and replaced with fake fur.

I stand on a cocktail bar.

I would bet on Schama, but I think Starkey might have some better dirty tricks in his pockets. I say this with affection - I love a dirty trick.

People don't realise it, but David Starkey also loves a dirty joke.

I normally answer this question by saying "After the invention on anaesthetics", in case the Delorean crashes. I have a particular nerdy interest in visiting certain bits of the various palaces where we have tried to turn the clock back. Did we get the wallpaper the right colour? Did we plumb in the wine fountain correctly?

But for general fashion reasons, I choose 1925.

Frappuccino is delicious. If we put on a programme or exhibition as tasty as frappuccino, that is an excellent gateway drug to harder stuff, isn't it? (We'll drop the drugs analogy now.)

Seriously, someone writes to me to tell me, every once in a while, that they watched a history program I had been involved in, then they bought a book, then they attended an evening class, and very often, they seem to tell me that they have graduated in history from the Open University. We get to Hobsbawm in the end!

I'd like to put in the case for George IV. He wasn't a very good king because, as his wife said, he would have been much better off as a hairdresser. He had wonderful talents of visual flair and creativity (and he did build some nice palaces). But he wasn't equipped to lead a country into an industrial revolution. Unable to take the strain, he turned to drink and drugs. Actually, I'm not saying he is underrated - he was a flawed human being and deserves some sympathy. Very sad story.

At the time I was sad that he survived. Now I am glad.

Well I too was a Reading Abbey girl, for about 10 minutes in the infants department. What is little known is that my brother also attended the girls' school with me. I think that is why he's well-trained and feminised.

Henry VIII too was brought up among women, by his mother. He learnt to love women. Possibly too much...

I literally just had to ask what this question meant. I thought you were talking about popes!

Ooh, hard question. Would it be Dan Snow's History Hit or Janina Ramirez's Art Detective? Fight! Fight! Fight!

I do believe that places or objects can speak. Of course I think that, I am a museum curator! I like the nitty, gritty, dirty detail of daily life. And the evidence for it. I think tiny little things can be political. It is a bit of a mantra amongst the curators who work with me at Hampton Court that when we walk down the corridor, only time and not space, separates us from people of the past. I defy anyone not to feel that "sizzle" of history.

Yes.

No! I was wearing a flesh coloured bathing costume. The young researcher who stirred up the bubbles is now a highly respected television director. I am very proud that her career included bubbling me.

Hello piglet28. I've picked your question because I like your name.

I think that a lot of people make the wrong assumption that because of feature films of Jane Austen novels, that usually feature a lot of Georgian property porn and grand houses, that she must have lived a life that was all tea parties and dancing at balls. That's not really true, because she wasn't at quite the right level in society for that. She did sometimes visit her rich relatives, but she was always the poor relation. That's why she could so clearly see what was wrong with Georgian high society. She had a sliver of ice in her heart.