"I’d love TOWIE to do the Only Way is Tudor and what about Masterchef does Rationing, wouldn’t that be fun?"

Historian Kate Williams, a panellist on the BBC's high-brow, new quiz, Quizeum, talks trash TV, Horrible Histories - and that spat with David Starkey

Professor Kate Williams Credit: Photo: Andrew Crowley/The Telegraph

Would it be sexist of me to mention that Kate Williams, the latest author and TV historian heading for primetime has the most gorgeous cascade of pale gold Pre-Raphaelite curls? And that as she takes her place as a regular on The Quizeum, a new and unapologetically highbrow BBC4 panel show, set in the nation’s museums, she might well be mistaken for a scholarly Lady of Shalott?

As Williams, 36, is the expert (in every sense) and she’s sitting opposite me on her battered sofa, wearing iridescent jacquard and a elaborately beribboned blouse, it’s probably better ask her. So I do.

“I’ve always considered myself to look like a rather plain-and-exhausted bluestocking, so it’s rather odd to read Tweets commenting on my appearance,” comes the bemused response from mother-of-one Williams.

“I’m never quite sure how to respond because there’s a real disconnect between what people say and the image I feel I project. One woman came up to me at a lecture and observed that I was much fatter than on television; I think I look better onscreen than in real life. It’s the lights.”

I’m not sure that’s entirely true, but now we’ve deftly tackled the proverbial Edward Burne-Jones in the room, it’s time to talk about the serious stuff. By which I mean, of course, museums and artefacts, the alleged feminisation of history by a monstrous regiment of women historians and whether it really is cabbages or kings that shape history most. The modern battle of the sexes has caused a “history versus herstory” debate about whether it’s productive or even worthwhile looking back and examining the distaff and the domestic. We all know that it’s the dead white men who command European history. But just because women – with a few extraordinary primus inter pares exceptions – tended to live quieter lives, does that make their stories any less interesting?

“I think increasingly we want to read the history that wasn’t written by the victors,” says Williams, who has a clutch of bestselling factual and fictional books to her name. “Cabbages and kings both have a role to play because the diktats of those in power affect every aspect of life for those below. Simply reading accounts of what a monarch said to his chancellor offers a very narrow view.”

Speaking of narrow views, when fellow historian David Starkey cantankerously complained about the “feminisation” of history by a plethora of lady historians who would insist on writing about the irrelevant supporting cast of royal wives and dutiful daughters rather than lionising the leading men, it was Williams who crisply responded in these pages.

The quizmasters: Griff Rhys Jones hosts The Quizeum (BBC/Modern Television/Peter Smith)

“It is true that more women have been producing history books over the past decade, and also that more men have been writing on female figures,” she wrote. “But this is less inverse sexism than a reflection of the huge growth in demand for books investigating our past – much of it fuelled by television. We now wish to know everything about our ancestors, from high political disputes to how people cleaned their houses.”

She was right of course, but then came the clincher: “Dr Starkey has no need to worry – there’s room for us all.” What was this? A typical woman; she’d only slyly gone and spiked his guns by adopting the sort of drawing room diplomacy that has no need of gunboats.

“I’m not sure how much David meant what he said; when I met him a bit later, he was terribly nice and declared how delighted he was to meet me,” smiles Williams. “I think it’s great that history, which used to be such a dry, dead subject is now the focus of so much lively discussion. There’s such a passion these days for discovering the past, and that includes our own past, not just the past of the highly privileged.”

This egalitarianism might also explain why she is at odds with education expert Robert Peal, who earlier this year blasted the hugely popular Horrible Histories for its “cartoonish” dumbing down of the subject. Peal, who is also a research fellow at the think tank Civitas, blamed the award-winning franchise for encouraging youngsters “not to think about the past but to laugh at it.”

Williams, who is about to take up a Professorship of History at the University of Reading, is unapologetic about her enjoyment of The Gorgeous Georgians and The Awful Egyptians. In fact, she’d go further, by harnessing popular, populist trash TV series, such as The Only Way is Essex in the service of history.

“I really enjoy watching TV; it offers an amazing window and its an incredible way of presenting history to young people in particular, “ she says. “I’d love TOWIE to do the Only Way is Tudor and what about Masterchef does Rationing, wouldn’t that be fun?”

It would certainly be a challenge rustling up apricot flan from carrots and meringues with powdered egg, but Williams is entirely serious. And lthough not as well known as historians Lucy Worsley or Amanda Vickery, is no broadcasting ingénue. On the contrary, she’s in demand for her expertise on social, constitutional and royal history. She commented extensively at the wedding of Prince William and kate Middleton in 2011 took part in the BBC’s Scottish Referendum coverage. Her contributions on the social origins of food added historical flavour to The Great British Bake Off and when she presented Timewatch: Young Victoria for the BBC it was lauded by critics as “television history at its best”.

Her appearance on Quizeum, a new programme presented by Gryff Rhys Jones which launched last night, should raise her profile even further, not least because it’s really rather fabulous. Teams of personable historians including Dan Cruickshank, Janina Ramirez and Williams must navigate their way round museums including the Ashmolean in Oxford, the National Museum Cardiff and the National Maritime Museum in London using cryptic clues to find various artefacts. They must also answer questions on obscure esoterica and identify various obscure objets, which might sound worthy, but is in fact entertaining, educational and unexpectedly funny.

“It’s part treasure hunt, part quiz and it really puts us on our mettle,” says Williams. “Some of the treasures are spectacular, others are so moving, like the little tokens – coins, thimbles, theatre tickets - given by mothers to their babies when they handed them into the Foundling Hospital, which is now a Museum.

David Starkey: Harriet Harman represents worst of old aristocracy and new meritocracy

David Starkey (Andrew Crowley)

As a child herself, Williams was obsessed with time travel and built time machine, using a box in which the washing machine had been delivered. She covered it in silver foil, then put her younger brother, Geoff, inside.

“Geoff must have been four or five at the time,” she says. “I would bang the sides and shake the box around with him inside and shout ‘We’ve landed in the Pyramids!’ or ‘We’re now in Victorian England!’ I would vividly describe the scene to him, but I wouldn’t let him out because he’d see we hadn’t gone back in time and that would spoil the magic.” It probably goes without saying that Geoff, who eventually grew far too large for a box, was so affected by his immersive history lessons, that he now works in IT.

Williams lives in the North London borough of Islington with her partner Marcus Gipp, who works in publishing and their four-year-old daughter, Persephone.

“I was going to call her Andromeda, but the midwife persuaded me not to,” confesses Williams, half wistful, half relieved. “So she got it as a middle name, followed by Victoria.”

Williams, the daughter of a lawyer and a teacher, was educated at the independent Edgebaston High School for Girls in Birmingham. She studied English at Oxford and went on to take a doctorate in history. Later she gained further MAs in history and creative writing from two London universities and rapidly gained a reputation for accessible erudition in print and on the airwaves.

Her hugely well-received oeuvre includes her first book, England’s Mistress, a biography of Emma Hamilton and Becoming Queen, which examined the youth of Queen Victoria. She has also written “Josephine: Desire, Ambition, Napoleon”, a biography about the present Queen entitled Young Elizabeth: The Making of Our Queen as well as an historical novel The Pleasures of Men about a serial killer in 1840s London.

William’s latest novel, The Storms of War, is set around the Great War, her favourite period of history. It has just been published in paperback and qualifies as thoroughly engaging must-read for aviewers left pining for the next series of Downton Abbey. The story, of a well-to-do family that is half British, half German, throws into sharp relief the effect of war on the homefront. It’s fictional of course, but within a framework of historical accuracy. The second book of William’s trilogy is with her publisher; she has six months to complete the final volume but rather than distracting from her factual researches, there’s a happy symbiosis.

“The joy of fiction is that you can speculate as much as you like and create characters,” she says. “I keep invention out of my history books, and I keep fact dumps out of my novels.”

I’m not sure the Lady of Shallot would have used the term ‘fact dump”. But then again, she never had the chance to see Towie doing the Tudors. I hope we do.

The Quizeum runs for 8 weeks and the second episode is on Wednesday April 1 on BBC Four at 8.30pm