IF you think Queen Victoria was a little old lady, spherical in shape, dressed in black, perpetually grumpy, historian Lucy Worsley wants to make you think again. Meet a complex, contradictory woman, who had a traumatic childhood, who loved dancing, who suffered calamity and bereavement, before coming out the other side as an eccentric, powerful and really rather magnificent old lady.

Lucy's illustrated talk, Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother and Widow, which she will be giving at Tennants in Leyburn in October, takes you into the life, the palaces, and the rich colourful age of this woman who ruled a quarter of the globe.

Lucy is a historian, author and chief curator at Historic Royal Palaces. She has presented numerous TV programmes including The First Georgians: The German Kings Who Made Britain, A Very British Romance and co-presented Dancing Cheek to Cheek: An Intimate History Of Dance.

She will be speaking at The Garden Rooms at Tennants on Thursday, October 24, at 7pm, tickets from £18. To find out more visit tennantsgardenrooms.com or call 01969 621146