Anglo-Saxon kings often used to favour their sister's son to their own - for at least you could guarantee there was your own blood in your sister's son!
The British Museum was our first real museum, the property of the public rather than the monarch or the church.
When Elizabeth II was crowned - the sixth female monarch since the Norman conquest - the world lit up in her favour.
Redheads were particularly persecuted during the European witch trials of the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The colour was associated with the devil, and the pale skin which most redheads have was thought unnatural and deathly.
As historians, we spend days in archives, gazing at account books. We train would-be historians in the arts of deciphering letters and documents, early Latin, scribal handwriting, medieval French.
I am part of a team organising an Emma Hamilton exhibition for the National Maritime Museum for 2016, and the amount of planning is a revelation - borrowing from museums and collections all over the world.
The centuries-old habit of privileging the male heir arose because monarchs were supposed to lead their country in battle, and only men were thought strong enough to do so.
Indeed, throughout much of history and in many cultures, redheads have been viewed with suspicion and fear - and even killed - because of their hair.
Eighteenth-century matrons would have never have dreamed of appointing a redhaired wet nurse for their precious offspring - redheads passed on their horrible characters through their milk.
It's the 21st century. It's untenable to suggest that women had no significance and no interest and that just because they didn't vote they had no relevance to the course of our history.
I think increasingly we want to read the history that wasn't written by the victors.
