Nell Gwyn: life of the week

Hello and welcome to Life of the Week from History Extra, where leading historians delve into the lives of history's most intriguing and significant figures. No one epitomized the wild spirit of the Restoration era quite like Nell Gwynne, an orange seller turned actress, turned royal mistress. She hustled her way to the very top with charm, wisecracks and withering put-downs. For today's Life of the Week episode, Ellie Cawthorne spoke to Sophie Shawland about Gwynne's Rags to Riches story.

It's lovely to have you on the podcast, Sophie, because we're going to be delving into the life of one of the most remarkable characters of the Restoration era. Can you give us a 60-second intro to Nell Gwynn? What can we expect in this episode? So Nell Gwynne is sometimes known as the 17th-century Cinderella because she was a bit of a kind of rags to riches tale. So she grew up incredibly poor, a really, really difficult life.

She was possibly a child prostitute and then became one of the first ever actresses on the English stage, became incredibly successful. and then eventually caught the eye of King Charles II, became one of his principal mistresses, sometimes known as his countryside mistress, even though she was actually quite, you know, London bitcockney, and had a love affair with him that lasted until the end of his life and made quite a lot of money from it. amazing summary and that it's a great sense of some of the incredible stories to come. So let's go back to the beginning of Nell's life. What do we know for certain and watch some of the stories that are told about her upbringing?

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