I’ve always been interested in the past. At school, I threw myself into history lessons. I turned one of my mum’s bedsheets into a toga so I could pretend to be a Roman, and spent holidays learning hieroglyphics long after lessons on ancient Egypt had finished.
When I was eight, we did the Tudors at school, and my aunt took me to the Tower of London, not far from where I grew up in Thurrock, Essex. I was spellbound. Back home, I’d pore over my mum’s Encyclopaedia Britannica, try to copy Hans Holbein portraits, and watch documentaries about Henry VIII over and over. There was just something magical about the Tudors.
