I'm currently hooked on historical series — with a modern twist.
You know the ones. Royals, czars, empresses and assorted aristocrats from the 1500s onwards, all played by remarkably good-looking actors with glowing skin, freshly washed hair and a full set of suspiciously white teeth.
They sweep through enormous palaces in velvet and silk. They climb grand staircases. They retire to beautifully appointed bedrooms.
And somewhere around episode three, I start wondering:
Who was carrying all the bath water up those stairs?
Because there was no geyser. No mixer tap. No lovely rainfall shower tucked discreetly behind the four-poster bed.
So did these people really look anything like their Netflix counterparts? Did they bathe every day? Did everybody stink? And was getting clean in 1550 actually worth the effort?
Let's have some fun and dispel a few myths.
First, you had to get the water there
A proper bath requires a surprising amount of water.
Back then, every bucket had to come from somewhere — a well, pump, spring, river, cistern or public water source depending on where and when you lived. If you wanted a warm bath, the water then had to be heated over a fire.
Bucket by bucket.
And carried to the bath.
Bucket by bucket.
And when you'd finished luxuriating in it?
Yes. Someone had to deal with the dirty water too.
If you were wealthy, this was considerably less inconvenient because someone else was doing the carrying.
For servants, I suspect the arrival of Bath Night was not greeted with quite the same enthusiasm.
Did people actually bathe?
Yes.
This is where our first myth gets the boot.
The idea that everyone in medieval and Tudor Europe wandered around happily unwashed for months at a time isn't really accurate.
People washed. Faces and hands were washed regularly. Parts of the body could be cleaned using a basin, cloth and water. Underclothes and linen played an important role in keeping the body clean, and public bathhouses had existed across parts of Europe for centuries.
What they generally didn't have was our modern relationship with the shower.
We think nothing of using perhaps 50 or 60 litres of clean drinking water because we've been gardening for an hour.
They had to fetch it.
And what about the poor?
This is where the difference between washing and taking a bath really matters.
A wealthy household might have a bathtub, servants, fuel, plenty of linen and enough manpower to make the whole operation happen.
A poorer household wasn't necessarily filthy. People could wash themselves from a basin, use relatively small quantities of water and wash in rivers or other available water sources when circumstances allowed.
But heating a tubful of water costs fuel.
Fetching it costs time and labour.
Privacy is useful too.
When those things are scarce, a luxurious full-body soak drops rather rapidly down the day's priority list.
Did they exercise?
I can't imagine anyone in 1560 saying:
"I really must get my steps in today."
For most ordinary people, staying alive provided a fairly comprehensive exercise programme.
Water had to be carried. Wood chopped. Fires tended. Food grown. Animals cared for. Clothes washed without a washing machine. Floors scrubbed. Fields worked. Goods carried. Meals made from scratch — and I mean actually from scratch.
Even wealthy people walked, rode horses, hunted, danced and climbed a staggering number of stairs in buildings that had never heard of a lift.
There were certainly sports, games, wrestling, fencing, archery and other physical pursuits.
But a 6 a.m. HIIT class before sitting behind a desk all day?
Not really the problem they were trying to solve.
Then things got rather strange: bathing could be dangerous
Imagine somebody telling you:
Don't have a hot bath. It might open your pores and let disease in.
Perfectly ridiculous to us.
Not necessarily ridiculous to them.
Before anyone understood bacteria and viruses, doctors had to explain disease using what they could observe and the medical theories available to them.
For centuries, one influential idea was that disease could be caused by miasma — bad or corrupted air.
And during outbreaks of disease, there were periods when people were warned that hot bathing could open the pores, leaving the body vulnerable to whatever nastiness might be floating about.
Which produces one of history's great ironies.
At precisely the time when washing might have helped in some circumstances, avoiding a bath could sound like perfectly sensible medical advice.
"Keep those pores firmly shut, Margaret. There's plague about."
But surely they smelled?
Almost certainly — by our standards.
But remember that everybody lived in the same world.
There was wood and coal smoke. Horses. Livestock. Tanneries. Open drains in some places. Chamber pots. Human sweat. Cooking fires. Crowded streets. Limited sewerage.
Your personal fragrance was competing in quite a crowded field.
People also used herbs, scented waters, flowers, pomanders and perfumes. Clothes could be brushed and aired, and clean linen mattered enormously.
So no, history wasn't simply one enormous unwashed armpit.
But I suspect if we could climb into a time machine and walk into a crowded Tudor room, our modern noses might need a moment.
Now, about those Netflix teeth...
This may be where historical television takes its greatest liberty.
There were no electric toothbrushes.
No whitening strips.
No hygienist appointment every six months.
No emergency root canal followed by two Panados and Netflix.
People did clean their teeth in various ways, and historical recipes for tooth powders and cleaning preparations certainly existed.
But tooth decay, gum disease, abscesses and missing teeth were very real problems.
And for the wealthy, there was another complication: sugar.
As sugar became an expensive fashionable luxury, the people who could afford plenty of it weren't doing their teeth any favours.
Queen Elizabeth I is famously recorded as having badly discoloured and decayed teeth later in life.
So the next time a devastatingly handsome Tudor duke flashes thirty-two gleaming white teeth across the banquet table...
Enjoy the moment.
Historical accuracy has taken the evening off.
What about the famous June bride story?
You've probably heard this one.
People supposedly had their annual bath in May, married in June while they were still relatively fresh, and brides carried bouquets of flowers to disguise the smell.
It is a magnificent story.
Unfortunately, there isn't good historical evidence for that neat little explanation.
Flowers, herbs and greenery have been associated with weddings for all sorts of reasons — symbolism, fertility, celebration, religion, fashion and scent among them.
So yes, a bridal bouquet certainly smelled nicer than a sweaty person.
No, we can't confidently say June weddings exist because everybody's annual bath was already wearing off.
Another excellent story ruined by facts.
And yet people were dying from things we barely think about today
Consumption — what we now call tuberculosis.
Sweating sickness.
Plague.
Dysentery.
Infected wounds.
Complications after childbirth.
A tiny cut could become a serious infection.
And here's the extraordinary part:
Nobody knew germs existed.
You couldn't wash something away if you didn't know it was there.
The connection between microscopic organisms, contaminated water, dirty hands, wounds and disease would take centuries to unravel.
It was only much later, particularly through the 18th and 19th centuries, that improvements in water supply, sewerage, soap production, public health and eventually germ theory began changing everyday cleanliness into something we'd recognise.
Clean hands weren't merely nicer hands.
Clean water wasn't merely nicer water.
Clean wounds weren't merely nicer wounds.
They could mean the difference between life and death.
So when did cleanliness become next to godliness?
The exact phrase "cleanliness is next to godliness" was famously used by Methodist founder John Wesley in 1778, although the association between physical cleanliness, purity and religion is much older.
By the Victorian era, cleanliness was becoming increasingly tied to respectability, morality and good housekeeping — while science was simultaneously beginning to show that hygiene had very practical health benefits.
Eventually the bathtub moved from being an undertaking involving buckets, fires and possibly several resentful servants to something sitting permanently in the house.
Then came reliable piped water.
Better sewerage.
Modern plumbing.
Hot-water systems.
Bathrooms.
Showers.
And, eventually, the ability to stand under perfectly clean hot water for twenty minutes while contemplating absolutely nothing.
Perhaps the good old days weren't quite that good
I love the clothes.
The castles.
The horses.
The enormous kitchens.
The ridiculous dinner tables.
I'll even take the candlelight.
But perhaps our beautifully scrubbed television royals have given the 1500s a bit of a makeover.
If we portrayed history completely accurately, there would probably be fewer perfect teeth, rather more questionable complexions, considerably more fleas and at least one person in every palace shouting:
"Who is carrying all this bath water back downstairs?"
So tonight, when you turn a tap and hot water just... comes out, give a small nod to progress.
And if you add bubbles?
After everything we've just learned, I think you've earned them.