Ruth Goodman (historian)

Ruth Ellen Goodman (born 5 October 1963) is a British freelance historian of the early modern period, specialising in offering advice to museums and heritage attractions. She is a specialist in British social history and after presenting the 2005 television series ''Tales from the Green Valley,'' went on to participate in several BBC historic farm series. She occasionally presents features for ''The One Show'', and she co-presented '' Secrets of the Castle'' in 2014, and ''24 Hours in the Past'' (2015).

Early life

She was born in Cardiff and went to Westbury primary school and Fearnhill School in Letchworth. "School...was rather pedestrian...I became a very poor student, simply going through the motions, and my academic record at both school and university indeed lacks lustre."

Career

Goodman "couldn't get a job after university", so she trained for a job as railway ticket clerk, for British Rail, working at Chester railway station, got pregnant, and only lasted a year because she could not go back to work, part-time, after giving birth.

Goodman has been a consultant to the Victoria & Albert Museum and the film ''Shakespeare in Love''. She is a member of the Tudor Group, a re-enactment organisation for the Tudor period. As a result of her social history research, she has stopped using detergents in her washing machine, never eats factory farmed food and sometimes cooks on an open wood fire.

Since participating in ''Tales of the Green Valley'' in 2005, she has been a presenter on the BBC
...