Janice Turner in The Times Magazine, 19 May 2012. Historian Lucy Worsley discusses her own childlessness and the inspirational women who feature in her new documentary series.

By his unofficial harem of mistresses, Charles II sired 13 illegitimate babies, yet his queen, Catherine of Braganza, produced not a single heir. History, as Dr Lucy Worsley reflects in her new TV series, is so driven by the continuation of bloodlines that Catherine, who could not fulfil her basic job description, was treated as a tragic figure. But if barren wives were to be pitied, what of women who opt out of the whole business of consolidating dynasties and passing on DNA, who choose not to have children?

As a historian Worsley has produced three books, two TV series and curated many exhibitions about women’s lives. She can discourse equally on royal mistresses such as Barbara Villiers, who parlayed her rouged nipples and boudoir talents into power at the Restoration court, to nameless kitchen wenches blackleading grates, which she has done herself: “You have dirty fingernails for two weeks.”

But nonetheless she was astounded by the furore caused by her comment in a recent interview that she had been “educated out of the reproductive function”.

Too brainy to breed? How very dare she. Columnists declared war. Women with Oxford firsts – like Worsley’s – wrote indignantly that they were passing on their learning to offspring with their mother’s milk. In an offhand remark, Worsley had walked into our cultural bear-pit where the debate about whether women should put work or family first never ends.

“Oh, golly!” she says of the uproar. “I was afraid there would be a queue of journalists outside my door at home, saying, ‘Look, it has come to our attention that you have maliciously refused to have children, so we’ve come round with a turkey baster and we’re going to sprog you up now – our editor insists.’ I think there is still a significant fear of a woman who chooses to remain childless.”

Her words, she says, were misinterpreted: she does not think she is too clever to have children: “I don’t want to be in any way disrespectful to mothers. I am not their enemy.” All she had meant was that growing up in the Eighties, the overriding message from her teachers and parents was, “ ‘Don’t get pregnant, finish your GCSEs.’ And for some of us, maybe that early conditioning has stuck in a way that our teachers probably didn’t intend.”

But there is a fine line, it seems, between being a good girl who studies hard and letting an excess of bookishness dry up your womanly instincts. The Daily Mail dusted down that old insult “blue stocking”, used on women intellectuals since Mary Wollstonecraft. But Worsley was only amused. “That picture that the Mail used of me has me actually wearing blue stockings! That gave me a secret pleasure.” She has become, unintentionally, a poster girl for the deliberately child- free, receiving many letters from happy unmaternal women saying, “I’m not the freak I thought I was.”

In fact, despite her taste in hosiery and her brisk rattling off of dates and facts, Worsley’s view of history could not be further from academic aridity. On TV she is noted for a keenness to dress up in bodices, remove stains from her clothes with urine or adopt a Tudor personal hygiene regime for a week.

As chief curator of the Historic Royal Palaces – which includes Kensington, Hampton Court, Kew and the Tower of London – she is unashamedly populist, staging huge crowd-pleasing exhibitions on Henry VIII and the royal mistresses. Sometimes the tone seems a little awry: at Kensington Palace you don’t just learn about Victoria’s grief for Albert, you can also buy replicas of her black-edged mourning lace and jet locket in the gift shop.