Speaker
Amanda Bryett
Amanda Bryett is a multi-award winning London Blue Badge tourist guide who lives in Windsor where she runs her Tourist Guides business. Prior to this she spent 17 years working for a major vaccine company in public relations.
About Amanda Bryett
Amanda Bryett continues to be in demand as a passionate, entertaining and knowledgeable speaker. Having regularly appeared on TV, radio and in the media for anything from royal weddings, to childhood vaccinations.
Having worked in the vaccine industry for 17 years, Amanda is well versed in all things infectious; from smallpox to whooping cough and from influenza to COVID. She regularly appeared on TV, radio and in print media on the subject of childhood, adult and travel vaccination.
With her love of history and the British royal family she then trained as a London Blue Badge tourist guide. The Blue Badge is the highest level of tourist guiding in the UK, a bit like having a Michelin star! Amanda set up her own company specialising in private bespoke tours of Windsor Castle and the town.
She regularly works with the media on everything from royal weddings, walkabouts and jubilees. Her most recent TV appearance was on The Architecture the Railways Built for the Yesterday channel. Combining her pharmaceutical career with her guiding career her talks are fun and interactive.
Royal Flush:
How the British line of royal succession has changed over the centuries by something as simple as an infectious disease. Royals who died of the plague, smallpox, typhoid and influenza to name but a few and those monarchs who would never have been monarchs had their older siblings not succumbed to disease.
Blossom the cow changed history:
From the days of Edward Jenner to Oxford/Astra Zeneca, how vaccines have changed our world. The early attempts at vaccination, the tragic death of a royal infant and how milkmaids ‘fair of face’ held the key to unlocking protection against the speckled monster that was smallpox.
Plagues, pandemics and potions:
From the Black Death in the 14th century, to the Great Plague of London in 1665 to the Spanish Flu of 1918. Hear how Elizabeth I locked down Windsor by simply ordering a new set of gallows and how fake news is nothing new when it comes to protecting yourself again diseases.
Covent Garden Ladies:
In the mid 1700s Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies was a publication that sold over a quarter of a million copies. Hear the story of the women who came to London seeking fame and fortune who often found themselves having to enter into the oldest trade in existence while others became famous, wealthy and married into the aristocracy becoming real life “ladies”. From Nell Gwynn to Emma Hamilton to Jane Austen – goodness where does she fit in?!
A thousand years of coronations:
Westminster Abbey saw the very first coronation on Christmas Day 1066 when William the Conqueror was crowned. The Norman soldiers outside heard cheering and became to burn houses down and attack the congregation! From the monarch who refused to sit on the coronation chair to the monarch to the circus horse at the coronation banquet, this entertaining talk looks at the mishaps and marvels of the coronation service.
