The first ever Rest is History Club Festival, exclusively for our members, takes place at Hampton Court Palace on Saturday 4th and Sunday 5th July 2026.

Two amazing days built especially for the club, in one of England’s great historic palaces.

To get your tickets head to the members area and click on Club Festival. 

Here's what your ticket includes:

• Four live shows in a day: The full Rest is History live experience, four times over. Tom and Dominic on stage with the country’s leading historians. Eight headline shows across the weekend, with guests we’ve never had on stage together.
  
  
• The run of Hampton Court Palace: Henry VIII’s Great Hall, the Tudor kitchens and the baroque state apartments built for William III and Mary II. 60 acres of gardens to wander between shows. The whole estate, yours for the day (worth £29)
  
  
• Objects from the palace collection, on show just for the weekend: A club festival exclusive with the Historic Royal Palaces curators. Pieces from the Hampton Court collection not normally on public display, on show for these two days only. 
  

   

• Living history all day: Costumed reenactments, period music, close demonstrations from the curators, and (we’re told) a properly choreographed bit of medieval combat across the grounds.
  
  

• Fine food and drinks with other friends of the show:  Food and drink across the gardens, picnic blankets welcome. And the bit you can’t get anywhere else: a day spent alongside other friends of the show and the hosts themselves.
  
  

• Upgrade to a premium experience:

  Take your club festival experience to a VIP level with our premium tickets which include access to the exclusive all-day dining tent, providing fabulous (and unlimited) free food and drink, access to covered seating for the live shows and VIP parking tickets. 

On stage:

Saturday, 4th July

• Tracy Borman on the Tudors

  Joint Chief Curator of Historic Royal Palaces and a leading Tudor biographer. A live Rest Is History inside the dynasty’s own palace, drawing on the rooms you’ll be standing in.

  Ali Ansari on Persia

  Professor of Iranian History at St Andrews. Three thousand years of Persian empires, dynasties and revolutions, brought into a single show.

  Paul Rouse on Ireland

  Professor of History at University College Dublin and one of the island’s most engaging chroniclers. The Irish story across the centuries, told at pace.

  Mary Beard on Rome

  Cambridge classicist and author of SPQR and Pompeii. A live Rest Is History on the empire that shaped the West, with the historian who has brought Rome to more readers than anyone alive. 
  
  

Sunday, 5th July

• Katja Hoyer on Weimar Germany

  Historian of modern Germany and author of Blood and Iron and Beyond the Wall. The Weimar Republic up close: art, politics, hyperinflation and the slow slide that followed.

  Helen Castor on Elizabeth I

  Medieval and Tudor historian, author of She Wolves and The Eagle and the Hart. The Virgin Queen drawn out beyond the portraits, by one of the country’s sharpest writers on royal power.

  Adam Smith on US Presidents

  Oxford historian of American politics. From Washington to the modern day, the office and the people who have made it, remade it and tested it.

  Dan Jackson on the Momentous Pit Disaster

  Author of The Northumbrians and a leading historian of the North East. The human story behind one of the region’s defining moments, told by its most passionate chronicler.
  
  

Ticket Prices: (Available to club members only) 

One Day Standard Ticket: £150

Weekend Standard Ticket: £270

One Day Premium Ticket*: £550

One Day Parking: £12

*Price includes one day standard ticket and parking plus VIP upgraded experience