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This spring, our attention focuses on the baroque, as Hampton Court Palace presents a new exhibition: The Wild, the Beautiful and the Damned. This captivating show explores the story of beauty, debauchery and decadent art at the late Stuart Court (1660-1714). The accompanying adult learning programme allows you to delve further into this glamorous, beauty-loving world and the monarchs and courtiers who presided over it.
Portrait of Nell Gwyn as Venus c.1668, Peter Lely

Programme of events 2012


Click on events for further information and booking.


  • Pudden and Pye
  • The Beautiful Life: Fashion, Entertainment and Performance at the late Stuart Court
  • An Audience with Charles II
  • Skin deep: Beauty in the reign of Charles II
  • The Wild, the Beautiful and the Damned Study Afternoon
  • A Gambling Man: Charles II and the Restoration
  • Facing Beauty
  • Capturing Beauty
  • Unhealthy Histories: Syphilis at the Court of Charles II
  • The Body of Queen Anne



    Pudden and Pye - CANCELLED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE
    Stuart Cookery Workshop
    With Hampton Court Palace History Cooks

    Date        Monday 9 April
    Time       10.30am – 4.30pm
    Cost        £49 / £44 HRP members

    Join Hampton Court Palace’s History Cooks in creating your own Stuart feast!

    The development of the pudding cloth and refinements in pastry-making led to the creation of two Stuart (and British) favourites — pudding and pie.

    The pudding and pie recipes you will work from have been taken from Stuart manuscripts and each one has been chosen to demonstrate techniques and flavours that are no longer commonly used in modern cuisine.

    Working both individually and together as a group, you can take your completed dishes home or taste as you cook. This is a great opportunity to work with Hampton Court Palace’s resident history cooks.

    All ingredients supplied.

    This workshop includes light refreshments and entry to Hampton Court Palace.

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    The Beautiful Life: Fashion, Entertainment and Performance at the late Stuart Court
    Evening Lecture
    With Olivia Fryman and Past Pleasures

    Date        Tuesday 17 April
    Time        6.30pm – 8pm
    Cost         £12 / £10 HRP members

    On Charles II’s restoration, the pious reserve of the Cromwellian regime was swept away and replaced by a culture of magnificence, hedonism and partying.

    At court and in public, aristocratic men and women ‘performed’ for, and in competition with, each other, seeking to enhance their popularity, wealth and matrimonial or sexual prospects. Being beautiful helped but good looks were only one element of a ‘beautiful performance’. Courtiers were required to wear the richest and most fashionable dress, attend a dizzying round of social engagements and know the complicated rules of etiquette that governed all types of interaction, from entering a room to dancing a minuet.

    Join Olivia Fryman, co-author of Beauty, Sex and Power: A Story of Debauchery and Decadent Art at the Late Stuart Court (1660 – 1714) and our Past Pleasures Costumed Interpreter as they discuss these court rules of fashion and etiquette, and how they were understood during the late 17th century. Court life was glamorous and lucrative, with access to the most important and wealthiest sources of patronage, titles and influence in the country. Yet it could also be a road to social, moral and financial ruin.

    This event includes a drinks reception.  

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    An Audience with Charles II
    Q&A Session with King Charles II

    Date        Monday 7 May
    Time       6.30pm – 8pm
    Cost        £12 / £10 HRP members

    The year is 1682. Charles II is granting an audience at Hampton Court Palace.

    The turbulence of Charles’s upbringing, with civil war, the execution of his father and his own exile has created a cautious, cynical king who is a skilled political manipulator. However, his common touch and natural charm have inspired a love for him amongst his people, the like of which hasn’t been seen since the reign of Queen Bess.

    Charles rules over a court famous for its decadence and has collected artworks and mistresses with equal enthusiasm. He has fathered a dozen illegitimate children, but produced no legitimate heirs. He is head of the English Church but is rumoured to have strong Catholic sympathies. He has founded the Royal Observatory and supported the study of science through the Royal Society. Is Charles a great patron of the arts and sciences or, more simply, a loveable rogue who just happens to be living through an extraordinary time?

    Whatever your thoughts on the ‘merrie monarch’, this is your chance to ask everything you ever wanted to know! Audience questions will be put to Charles by our resident experts.

    This event includes a drinks reception. You may also want to visit The Wild, the Beautiful and the Damned open 5.30pm – 9.30pm.

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    Skin deep: Beauty in the reign of Charles II
    Evening Lecture
    With Stefania Crowther, Centre for Renaissance Studies, University of Warwick

    Date        Thursday 10 May
    Time        6.30pm – 8pm
    Cost        £12 / £10 HRP members

    Sir Peter Lely’s ‘Windsor Beauties’ show Stuart women with translucent skin, appearing as ‘natural beauties’, free of cosmetics. Was this a 17th-century equivalent of airbrushing or did these women have sophisticated cosmetics at their disposal?

    The 17th century saw a growing mass market for cosmetic recipes and in the home, women combined their understanding of cookery with their knowledge of herbal medicine to produce a myriad of skin treatments. Ingredients varied from the dangerous, like lead and mercury, to the unpalatable: urine, hog’s grease and animal fats. Household ingredients were also used: lemon juice and egg as well as rose water and almond oil — things that still appear in cosmetics today.

    Join Stefania Crowther as she discusses beauty practices at the 17th-century court, theatre, and in the home, exploring the roots of the ‘beauty industry’, its consequences for the individual and its relationship with health, comparing early modern skincare preparations with today’s practices. This event draws on items from the Wellcome Library, including domestic recipe books, 17th-century cosmetics marketing and medical receipts.

    This event includes a drinks reception.

    To book, click here. 

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    The Wild, the Beautiful and the Damned Study Afternoon
    Study Afternoon
    With Brett Dolman, HRP Curator and David Souden HRP Head of Access & Learning

    Date        Tuesday 15 May
    Time        2pm – 4.30pm
    Cost        £30 / £26 HRP members

    The Wild, the Beautiful and the Damned explores the different meanings and uses of ‘beauty’ at the late Stuart Court. This is a sensual story of beautiful women, of beautiful art, of glamour, celebrity and love, and of beauty secrets, lust, infidelity and death.

    Join our study day to hear Brett Dolman introduce the court and its most famous courtiers and mistresses of Charles II — Barbara Villiers, Nell Gwyn and Louise de Kéroualle — for whom beauty provided a fast track to wealth, power and influence.

    Away from this elite and licentious world, Dr David Souden will then consider what life was like for ordinary women. David is co-author, with Brett Dolman and Olivia Fryman, of Beauty, Sex and Power, the book which accompanies the exhibition.

    Stuart Britain was still a man’s world. Yet the events within the 50 or so years after 1660 led to a more equitable future. David will describe Stuart women’s greater visibility as traders, manufacturers, writers and consumers.

    This event includes light refreshments and exhibition entry.

    To book, click here. 

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    A Gambling Man: Charles II and the Restoration
    Evening Lecture
    With Jenny Uglow

    Date        Wednesday 23 May
    Time        6.30pm – 8pm
    Cost        £12 / £10 HRP members

    Charles II was a gambling man. He was not a wild player at dice or cards — he left the big stakes to his courtiers. But he took risks, judged odds and staked all, including his kingdom. He kept his cards close to his chest, and made it hard to guess his hand. He borrowed to cover his bets. Some said his soul was in hock to the French King, the Pope, or the devil.

    Biographer Jenny Uglow will examine the first ten years of the Restoration, and the life of Charles II through the lens of those years. In a decade that saw the plague, the Great Fire of London and war with the Dutch, Charles managed to balance a nation’s fortunes through his juggling act between the Church, parliament and foreign powers. These years also saw the return of glamour and scandal to the court and a new balance between King and government. In all of this, Charles was the supreme player,
    enacting a strategy based on charm, outward compliance and private evasion.

    This event includes a drinks reception.

    To book, click here. 

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    Facing Beauty
    Evening Lecture
    With Aileen Ribeiro, Professor Emeritus in the History of Art, Courtauld Institute of Art

    Date        Thursday 31 May
    Time       6.30pm – 8pm
    Cost        £12 / £10 HRP members

    Join Aileen Ribeiro as she introduces the shifting perceptions of female beauty, before discussing the celebrated portraits of the late 17th and early 18th centuries in detail. The fluid, sensual lines of 17th-century baroque initiated a shift towards a more ‘natural’ look, giving way in the 18th century to a more stylised and artificial face, a mask of ideal beauty.

    Throughout the history of the Western world, countless attempts have been made to define beauty in art and life, especially with regard to women’s bodies and faces. Aileen Ribeiro’s recent book Facing Beauty examines concepts of female beauty in terms of the ideal and the real, investigating paradigms of beauty as represented in art and literature and how beauty has been enhanced by cosmetics and hairstyles.

    Aileen will bring to life the evolving story of beauty using ravishing images of some of the most beautiful women in history, both real and ideal.

    This event includes a drinks reception.

    To book, click here. 

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    Capturing Beauty
    Drawing Event
    With Dr Sketchy and Past Pleasures Costumed Interpreters

    Date        Monday 4 June
    Time        7pm - 9pm
    Cost        £20 / £18 HRP members

    Re-create the atmosphere of the Stuart Court at this unique event! Join Dr Sketchy and Past Pleasures Costumed Interpreters for an evening of art and entertainment.

    The most famous mistresses of Charles II will be your muse — the beautiful, yet notorious, Barbara Villiers and ‘people’s princess’, pretty, witty Nell Gwyn. Both women have been the subject of many portraits as different artists have responded to the challenge of idealising their beauty.

    For courtiers and courtesans, having your portrait painted was not just a statement of fashion, but of vanity and ambition. Within the elegant setting of Hampton Court’s baroque palace, Barbara and Nell will introduce you to the hedonistic, beauty-loving world of the Stuart Court. Dr Sketchy will bring your creativity to the fore, as tutors demonstrate the basics of figure drawing. According to Dr Sketchy it isn’t about being an amazing artist. As long as you can put pencil to paper and move it around – you never know, you might just unleash that artist inside!

    This workshop includes entry to The Wild, the Beautiful and the Damned exhibition from 5.30pm until 9.30pm. No previous experience is necessary and all materials will be provided.

    To book, click here. 

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    Unhealthy Histories: Syphilis at the Court of Charles II
    Evening Lecture
    With Julia Hyland, Outreach for the History of Medicine Unit, University of Birmingham

    Date        Monday 18 June
    Time       6.30pm – 8pm
    Cost        £12 / £10 HRP members

    There were two sides to life at the court of Charles II, the glamorous elegance of fashionable court life, alongside the debauched reality of 17th-century behaviour. Throughout these hedonistic times, syphilis was widespread, and its effects devastating. Many who pursued the libertarian lifestyle a little too enthusiastically succumbed to the disease, their reputations destroyed.

    Join Julia Hyland as she discusses this disease, its place in 17th-century history, its treatment and the stigma associated with it. Julia will bring the history of this disease to life through medical effects make-up. This visual presentation includes some audience participation and will reveal how applying medical effects make up to a healthy individual can help them empathise physically and emotionally with the diseases of the past and stimulate debate into medical history and treatments.

    Pepys wrote in his diary in March 1664 that his brother fell ill of the pox, and lamented that ‘if he lives, he will not be able to show his head — which will be a very great shame to me.’

    This event includes a drinks reception.

    To book, click here. 

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    The Body of Queen Anne
    Evening Lecture
    With Dr Anna Whitelock, Royal Holloway, University of London

    Date        Thursday 28 June
    Time        6.30pm – 8pm
    Cost         £12 / £10 HRP members

    The Wild, the Beautiful and the Damned explores the sensual women of the late Stuart Court, telling their stories of glamour, celebrity, love and beauty secrets. These are very modern preoccupations from which some queens, not least Queen Anne, herself, have suffered.

    Anne remains an overlooked monarch — overshadowed by her own sister Mary as queen. Unaccomplished in self-fashioning and image, Anne’s obesity and gout meant that she had to be carried at her coronation. Over the course of her reign, she bore 15 children, none of whom survived to adolescence.

    Was Anne’s body and the failures of it a way of explaining her limited success and inglorious historical reputation? Seemingly, Anne’s body — ‘exceedingly gross and corpulent’ — was tied up with perceptions of her character and abilities. But modern historiography points to the need for a reassessment of Anne’s reign. Might Anne’s body actually be considered a political and propaganda asset — her desire to be a mother, her ill health making her seem a monarch of the people? Dr Anna Whitelock will challenge attitudes then and now, to bodies and beauty.

    In partnership with The Culture Capital Exchange. This event includes a drinks reception.

    To book, click here. 

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    • New  Current programme

    Spring Adult Learning Brochure (PDF 6MB) >


    Past programmes 2011

    Autumn Adult Learning Brochure (PDF 1.8MB) >

    Summer Adult Learning Brochure (PDF 2.5MB) >

    Hampton Court Palace also offers a range of short courses run in conjunction with our partner organisations:

    Booking Information

    For full details on booking events at all palaces, click here.

    Please note, if you want to book for more than one event in the same transaction, please call Historic Royal Palaces booking line on 0844 482 7799. There is a £2 transaction charge for all bookings made through the booking line. 
     

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