Latest news with #TheHistoryGossip
Irish Independent
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Podcast reviews: Jameela Jamil revisits wronged historical mistresses. Meanwhile, Lucy Worsley sizes up the swindlers
When Jameela Jamil isn't putting her head above the parapet on inclusivity issues, she's co-hosting Mistresses (Audible), a new series putting flesh, bones and brains on six 'Other Women'; the perceived dolly birds of powerful married men. She has teamed up with historian Dr Kate Lister of Betwixt the Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal and Society podcast fame, or from her very funny Instagram posts that straddle academia and erotica. Up for debate are the life and times of Louis XIV's 'official mistress' Madame de Montespan; Virginia Hill, formerly known as 'the female Al Capone' but latterly disregarded as Bugsy Siegel's moll; 7th century concubine turned first and last female emperor of China, Wu Zhao; Fidel Castro's lover Marita Lorenz; Malintzin, the enslaved Mesoamerican entwined with conquistador Hernan Cortes; and Mary Boleyn, with whom Henry VIII had an affair before infamously marrying her sister Anne. Jamil and Lister make a fine double act and occasionally throuple up with The History Gossip's Katie Kennedy for added deadpan wit. Female con artists, from Samantha Cookes to Anna Delvey, are far from a modern phenomenon. Women have always hustled in a world made by and for men. Lucy Worsley dons her best deerstalker hat to sleuth out more Lady Swindlers (Apple, Spotify) in a second season. Fellow historians, authors, comedians and journalists help her unpick crimes of yore, many of which were acts of survival, such as the so-called headline-grabbing Bob-haired Bandit, 20-year-old New Yorker Celia Cooney, who with her husband went on a robbing spree to help provide for their small family (Cooney's granddaughter here tells the real story behind the column inches). Another highlight is Catherine Murphy, single mother of three in 18th century London who began counterfeiting money, then considered treason – and the punishment: burning at the stake. It's either the best or worst time to hear historian Iain MacGregor on Paul Bavill's History Rage (Acast, Apple, Spotify) discuss the flawed narratives surrounding the atomic bomb. 'What is pissing you off in history?' is Bavill's opening gambit, and MacGregor grinds his axe on the film Oppenheimer. 'Great cast and I like the angle of its approach…' he begins, before berating its absence of a Japanese perspective and agreeing that the Pacific War was essentially 'an enormous race riot'.
Daily Mail
28-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Did people have lots of sex during the plague? Meet KATIE KENNEDY, the TikTok star spreading history's hottest gossip
Is it true that Marie Antoinette slept with her son? How did 1700s women sit down in their massive dresses? Did Charles II invent dogging? These are just some of the historical questions being answered by 25-year-old Katie Kennedy in her snappy, sassy social-media videos, and Gen Z are lapping it up. Kennedy – who goes by The History Gossip online – has more than 683,000 social-media followers, with her videos racking up to 5.9 million views. TikTok has named her one of its '2025 Creators to Watch' and recently she released a book, also called , full of juicy titbits from centuries past.
Buzz Feed
31-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Buzz Feed
Historian Says Posh Accents Ruin Period Dramas
At this year's Hay Festival, Jane Tranter – former executive vice-president of programming and production at the BBC and current producer of Austen adaptation The Other Bennet Sister – said actors 'start speaking posh' when they get a Pride And Prejudice -era script in their hands. 'Not everybody spoke posh in those days, so you have to work with that as well,' she shared (via The Times). Pinched voices, fussy hairdos, and 'weird hats' can risk leading to 'such a fetishised approach that it becomes a barrier between the audience and what is going on,' she adds. So, we spoke to author and historian Katie Kennedy (of viral account @TheHistoryGossip and new SKY History series History Crush) about what we lose when costume drama accents all start to sound the same. It's not an isolated trend Kennedy tells us the tendency isn't limited to period costume dramas. 'It is widely known that the acting industry is dominated by the middle and upper classes,' she says. In 2024, the Sutton Trust found that people from working-class backgrounds were four times less likely than their middle-class peers to work in any creative industry. BAFTA-nominated actors are five times more likely to have gone to private school than the general public. 'While this is an issue in itself,' Kennedy continued, 'it also heavily influences how history gets portrayed on screen. 'We've been sold this idea that everyone in the past was super polished and polite, and we've equated that with the classic RP [received pronunciation] accent.' That's not to say you can't change up voices, actors, stories, or perspectives, especially in looser adaptations like Bridget Jones (expertly nicked from Pride And Prejudice) – but would-be 'faithful' adaptations tend to sound distractingly, and sometimes inaccurately, similar. Take, the historian says, the 2022 film Emily. 'The Brontës are portrayed with soft-spoken middle-class voices, even though they most likely would've had an Irish or at least an Irish/Yorkshire mixed accent as their father was Irish,' she shares. Indeed, Charlotte Brontë's friend Mary Taylor said the author 'spoke with a strong Irish accent,' while the British Film Institute admits star Emma Mackey 's 'Yorkshire accent sporadically wanders down the M1″ in the movie. 'A lot of the time' in period dramas, 'the working-class accent has been attributed to comic relief, or a character who has had a troubled life,' she tells HuffPost UK. 'When everyone in a period drama speaks the same, you're not just losing historical accuracy, you're also reinforcing the idea that the only 'serious' or 'worthy' people in history were the ones who 'spoke properly.''
Daily Mirror
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
‘I went viral on TikTok for talking about the most scandalous parts of history'
TikTok sensation Katie Kennedy – aka The History Gossip – is bringing history to life in her new Sky TV show History Crush after going viral with her bawdy social media videos Queen Elizabeth I was 'fuggers', Henry VIII 'clapped' and it's debatable whether Anne Of Cleeves was a 'minger'. Katie Kennedy, better known as The History Gossip, uses this colourful language to bring alive famous historical characters in her bawdy social media posts, which have earned millions of likes on TikTok. Most people take years to get noticed, but Katie became famous practically overnight. One minute she was writing her 12,000-word dissertation on Women in Pompeii in her final year at Durham University, the next she'd posted a few quirky history videos on TikTok and gone viral. Like most students, she'd happily wile away hours of study time on social media, but for Katie, it led to greater things. 'I was on TikTok all the time anyway, so I posted some stuff about the Tudors and I got a couple of thousand followers Then I did a video with the caption – why were the Tudes clapped?' she says. Seeing my blank expression, she translates: 'Why were they really ugly? That did really well. It got onto this really big meme page called Great British Memes and they've got loads of followers. People were screenshotting it and asking, 'Is that you?' Earthy and funny, Katie's history videos are the right side of sweary, with a sprinkling of Gen Z language. 'Some of the slang that I've picked up through the years was originally just to get around TikTok guidelines,' she explains. Half a million followers later, Katie got a book deal and published The History Gossip – Was Anne Of Cleeves A Minger? And she will now be appearing on our screens on Sky TV's History Crush, where she'll be rummaging through the underwear drawers of historical figures like Lord Byron, Charles Dickens or Marie-Antoinette – and asking the big questions like was Henry VIII clapped? 'Yes he was,' she giggles. And was Lord Byron a crush or a burn? 'Definitely a crush.' The speed at which Katie got a book deal will have many seasoned writers gnashing at the bit. 'I had a message from my now agent in February last year when things were going off,' she says. 'And she was like, 'Have you ever thought about writing a book?' And I thought, 'Yeah maybe in the future.' But as soon as I handed in my dissertation, I started writing it and finished it during Freshers Week at Oxford – when I was hungover! 'We got it out for November for Christmas, because it was more of a gifty book. It's still really weird seeing it in the book shops.' When we meet outside on a sunny afternoon in pretty Vaults and Gardens Cafe by Radcliffe Camera in Oxford, where 25-year-old Katie's now studying for her masters, I have to ask, 'Was Anne of Cleeves a minger?' 'Well I don't think so,' she replies. 'Henry VIII gave her a castle and they had a brother and sister type of relationship. Of all his wives, she came out of it quite well. She wasn't really minging, like her portraits said, but she was 'mid'.' What about Elizabeth 1? 'Her teeth were fuggers because she ate so much sugar,' says Katie. 'And it's so funny that even when she looks a bit minging in her portrait, that's probably her best photoshopped version.' Katie has just returned from a holiday abroad, but her skin remains the colour of porcelain. 'I don't like to sit in the sun because I get scared of getting sunburned,' she says in her sing-song Geordie accent. 'I've lived in Durham my whole life. I grew up there, went to a local comprehensive school, did sixth form. And then a journalism apprenticeship with BBC,' she says. This explains why Katie's so good at finding a hook in a story – and she has a journalism certificate to prove it. 'In my posts, I have to get a three second intro to get people interested – that takes a lot of research,' she explains. 'I don't really script them though, I just press record!' The secret of Katie's success is clearly an authentic voice on the platform, which is backed up by years of hard academic study. 'I did journalism for two years, but I felt like I'd missed out on university, so I applied to Durham to do Ancient History and Archeology – and got in!' she says. While she seems surprised by her 'luck,' it strikes me that both Durham and Oxford are lucky to have someone with such a knack for bringing history to life. Although she has a bit of imposter syndrome, the university social life has made up for it. 'I loved being at Durham – all the traditions and stuff and that's partly why I wanted to come to Oxford,' she admits. 'It's fun and you don't get that in every university.' A quick peek at her socials and you can see Katie has settled in well since arriving last September. She laughs: 'Yeah the balls are so nice. I love wearing the gowns. I went to a Balioll College ball last week. I can't lie – the balls here are better than Durham!' Katie's first taste of history came when her parents dragged her around National Trust properties every Sunday. 'I remember when I was seven being like, I don't want to go to Wellington and Cragside, I just want to sit on my little Nintendo,'' she admits. But the experience left an impression, because she fell in love with immersive history - even becoming part of a Beamish Living Museum of the North exhibit. 'It's just down the road from where I liv,e so I did work experience there twice,' she recalls. 'Once dressed up as a Victorian school child and then as a Second World War evacuée and I had my little cardboard gas mask box. 'Did you know during rationing, instead of ice lollies little kids would have frozen carrots?' Inspired by TV historians such as Lucy Worsley and Ruth Goodman, Katie admits that Horrible Histories - which has probably done more to make history popular than all the dusty old academic institutions put together - inspired her. 'Horrible Histories doesn't make you feel like you're learning. The author of the books, Terry Deary, is from Sunderland, which is not far from where I'm from,' she adds proudly. 'I used to love Ruth when she would do Victorian Farm on TV and she would be like, 'I'm going to make bread from scratch.' She doesn't make you feel you're being lectured to – she's living history and talking about normal people, who I think get overlooked sometimes. 'It definitely sparked the way I like to present history in a fun, doesn't-feel-like-you're-learning type of way.' I do wonder what Katie's more traditional tutors think of her style of bringing history to the masses. 'When I first started on TikTok, I blocked everyone at Durham and friends and family, because I was embarrassed about posting a video that might get three views,' she reveals. 'It was only later when I did a series on the Victorians, that I stopped caring what people thought. 'My supervisor at Oxford's really supportive. I told him it's like Horrible History but for adults, and he thinks it's great that I'm making history more accessible.' Social media burn out is real for influencers. I ask how she's managing her time with so much on her plate. 'My masters is on British and European 18th-century history, and I'm doing my dissertation on the fan-making industry and how women used fans. But I've gone part-time now, so I've got another year to get my arse in gear and sort it': she says. 'I used to post every single day on TikTok, but I've learned to take a step back from it and know that if I don't post today, it's not like the end of everything.' And history clearly attracts a decent social media crowd. 'I just get Americans not being able to understand my accent, or they're like 'what's a minger?'' she laughs. In Durham she lives with her mum, dad and brother, who's just started studying politics at university. 'He was debating history or politics, but he likes arguments, so it's politics,' she says. While she's keen to ask if historical figures are worth dating, she sidesteps when asked if she's single. 'Depends on who's asking?' she smiles. But she gushes when talking about one of her great loves back in Durham. 'We've just got a King Charles Spaniel puppy called Millie – I love to sit and cuddle her in the garden,' she says. 'I miss her so much when I'm not there.' Devoting a lot of time to studying women in history Katie continues: 'I especially like the Brontes and also Mary Antoinette, because I feel like she was very misunderstood.' The arts have been losing out in the push for more maths and engineering, but Katie is making history cool again and reminds us the importance of knowing about our past. 'History keeps repeating itself,' she says. 'People aren't so different to us today. The Tudors put belladonna in their eyes to make them sparkle. Victorian women would eat arsenic wafers to give their skin a pale complexion and wore dresses dyed with a green pigment made from arsenic. Women died wearing them.' So, forget Brazilian butt lifts, or excessive tanning - when it comes to dying for beauty, the Tudors and Victorians got there first.
