Is it true that Marie Antoinette slept with her son? How did 1700s women sit down in their massive dresses? Did Charles II invent dogging? These are just some of the historical questions being answered by 25-year-old Katie Kennedy in her snappy, sassy social-media videos, and Gen Z are lapping it up.
Kennedy – who goes by The History Gossip online – has more than 683,000 social-media followers, with her videos racking up to 5.9 million views. TikTok has named her one of its ‘2025 Creators to Watch’ and recently she released a book, also called History Gossip, full of juicy titbits from centuries past.
All this, and Kennedy is still at university – Oxford – immersed in postgraduate studies in 18th-century history after completing her undergraduate degree at Durham. What do her co-students and tutors make of the fact she’s already a published author?
‘When I first started posting videos in late 2023 I was so embarrassed, I blocked everyone I knew at university so they wouldn’t see,’ she says.
However her account took off and before long her content was being reposted elsewhere. ‘My friends from uni started messaging, like, “Is this you?”’ They were supportive – so, too, is her supervisor at Oxford, who lets her know whenever he spies her book in Waterstones.
She didn’t arrive at Oxford boasting of her social-media status. Her new flatmate did, however, soon spot a video online, Kennedy recalls. ‘It was something like, “Did people shag during the Black Death plague?” I thought, “My god! That is such a bad first impression.”’
“Henry thinks I’m a minger? Rude!”
Now Kennedy blocks off a couple of hours every evening to research and record a video. ‘I’ve got a list of ideas on my Notes app, and I get requests from my Instagram community, too,’ she says. Once she’s chosen the topic, she’ll start her research. Kennedy always includes her references in her captions – ‘I feel it’s so important to quote your sources, because there’s so much misinformation online,’ she says. She does not, however, script her videos. ‘I’ll just kind of press “record” and see what happens.’
Kennedy credits her success to her gossipy, off-the-cuff style. ‘When I first started posting videos, I was very formal, and getting about three views,’ she says. ‘Once I started being less self-conscious of the way I speak and being more myself, it started taking off.’
Her video on whether Anne of Cleves was indeed as ugly as Henry VIII suggested was one of the first to go viral (Kennedy’s opinion? Henry VIII was the ugly one), followed by a series on the social history of Victorians. ‘When posting, what I think most about is the hook – the title of the video has to grab people or they’ll just scroll past,’ she says.
While some people might clutch their hearts in horror at the thought of young people getting their history lessons via TikTok, Kennedy points out: ‘They are going to be scrolling anyway, so they might as well come away from it having learnt something.’ She first found her love of history through the humour of Horrible Histories books, devoured as a child growing up in County Durham; then, as an 11-year-old, she was entranced by The Diary of Anne Frank.
‘My parents dragged us round National Trust houses on a Sunday and I remember thinking I’d rather play Nintendo,’ says Kennedy. ‘But I was obsessed with those diaries because Anne was such a normal person living in extreme circumstances.’ It was ‘a starting point’ in her passion for the past. Her parents, says Kennedy, have been very supportive of her social-media career, with her mum occasionally suggesting topics for her videos. Travelling the world also provides inspiration; recent trips to Versailles and Rome were fertile ground for content. Kennedy even gets recognised sometimes when she’s out and about, which, she says, feels ‘very surreal’.
The History Gossip book came about after several literary agents direct-messaged Kennedy in February 2024, only a few months after she first started posting online. ‘They said, “Have you ever thought about writing something?” and I said, “No, I’m still at uni!”’ The idea was appealing, however, and once she’d picked an agent, settled on an idea and pitched the book to publishers, all she had to do was find time to pen it while in the midst of her studies.
‘I started writing the book just after handing in my undergraduate dissertation, and finished it just before freshers’ week at Oxford,’ Kennedy recalls.
As for what’s next, she plans to write another book, and her Sky History YouTube series, History Crush, has recently launched. She may, however, need some translation in the US: ‘I thought Americans wouldn’t understand a word I’m saying, and sometimes in the comments they say, “We need subtitles”,’ she adds, laughing. ‘They will ask things like, “What does ‘minging’ mean?” but they do still watch, which is lovely.’
The History Gossip: Was Anne Of Cleves A Minger? And 365 Other Historical Curiosities by Katie Kennedy is published by Michael O’Mara Books, £14.99. To order a copy for £12.74 until13 July, go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937. Free UK P&P on orders over £25.
