Royals in taxis, Groucho Marx glasses on ski slopes, and a Soviet mole hiding in the Queen’s drawing room — this episode has it all. Listen Now.

In their second episode of Spies & The Crown, Kate Williams and Robert Hardman go full cloak-and-dagger as they unmask Anthony Blunt — the Queen’s own art adviser turned KGB spy — and dig into the bizarre world of undercover royals.

From Princess Elizabeth sneaking into the VE Day crowds, to Prince Harry insisting he was just “Bob” in a nightclub, history proves the Windsors have never been short on disguises.And then there’s the bombshell: how close did treachery really get to the heart of Buckingham Palace? And could it happen again?

Listen now to Queens, Kings & Dastardly Things — where the palace walls whisper, and the spies are sometimes already inside.

Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams

Series Producer: Ben Devlin

Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini

Executive Producer: Bella Soames

Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams

Series Producer: Ben Devlin

Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini

Executive Producer: Bella Soames

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular.

Sign up to Palace Confidential, the FREE royals newsletter from the Mail's top experts. Delivered straight to your inbox every Thursday, it's the smartest way to stay in the royal inner circle. Just head to dailymail.co.uk/palaceconfidential to sign up today.

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From the Tudors to King Charles III, the royals have always been close to spies. Listen to find out!

Today’s monarchs get discreet MI5 briefings — but back in Elizabeth I’s day, her spymaster Francis Walsingham was inventing the modern secret service with beer-barrel dead drops, forged letters, and a plot that sent Mary Queen of Scots to the block.

This episode of Queens, Kings & Dastardly Things dives into the wildest tales of royal espionage: Christopher Marlowe, the playwright who may have been a double agent; John Dee, the Queen’s astrologer signing his reports “007”; and Queen Victoria’s Indian confidant Abdul Karim, hounded as a foreign spy by jealous courtiers. Fast forward to World War II and you’ll find Hitler’s agents scheming to kidnap Edward VIII and put him back on the throne as a Nazi puppet.

Plots, paranoia, and velvet cushions hiding sharpened daggers — when royalty meets espionage, the truth is stranger than any Bond film.

Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams

Series Producer: Ben Devlin

Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini

Executive Producer: Bella Soames

Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams

Series Producer: Ben Devlin

Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini

Executive Producer: Bella Soames

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular.

Sign up to Palace Confidential, the FREE royals newsletter from the Mail's top experts. Delivered straight to your inbox every Thursday, it's the smartest way to stay in the royal inner circle. Just head to dailymail.co.uk/palaceconfidential to sign up today.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“Off with his head!” may be the most famous royal sentence ever passed — but what happens before the axe falls? Can kings and queens actually be locked up like the rest of us? Listen to find out!

On today’s episode of Queens, Kings & Dastardly Things, Kate Williams and Robert Hardman dig into the murky history of royal captivity — where velvet cushions meet iron bars, and sovereign immunity doesn’t always save the day.

We’ve got Charles I, the would-be master of disguise who chopped off his beard, called himself “Harry,” and still managed to end up wedged in a castle window like Winnie the Pooh after too much honey. We’ve got Mary Queen of Scots, forever scheming her way out of tower rooms and washer-woman costumes, until Elizabeth I finally lost patience. And we’ve got Marie Antoinette, who began her confinement with upholstered chairs and charity visits, but ended it humiliated, stripped of dignity, and walking towards the guillotine while the crowd jeered.

Not all prison stories end with a block and blade. Some are quieter — and crueller. George III was never convicted of treason, never even plotted escape, yet he spent his last years effectively locked up in Windsor, a prisoner of his own mind and his doctors’ brutal “cures.” And in the 20th century, Hitler’s Colditz Castle became a surreal jail for royal hostages — cousins of the Queen turned into bargaining chips in the dying days of the war.

So — can royals be jailed? History’s answer is complicated. Some lost their heads. Some lost their freedom. And some, like poor Princess Alice, were locked away simply for being inconvenient.

Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams

Series Producer: Ben Devlin

Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini

Executive Producer: Bella Soames

Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams

Series Producer: Ben Devlin

Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini

Executive Producer: Bella Soames

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular.

Sign up to Palace Confidential, the FREE royals newsletter from the Mail's top experts. Delivered straight to your inbox every Thursday, it's the smartest way to stay in the royal inner circle. Just head to dailymail.co.uk/palaceconfidential to sign up today.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.