Illustration of a couple

Sex and love

The trial of Lady Chatterley’s Lover: how the 'obscene' book caused a moral storm

Literary women through the ages: Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf and Charlotte Brontë all enjoyed female friendships which enriched their writing, say Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney. (Getty Images)

From Austen & Brontë to Woolf: literature’s forgotten female friendships

Out of the closets and into the streets: the legacy of the Stonewall Riots

A portrait of the romantic novelist Jane Austen. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

The real reason Jane Austen never married

A portrait of Elizabeth Woodville, queen of Edward IV. (Photo by The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)

8 things you (probably) didn’t know about the Woodvilles

Lucrezia Borgia with her father Pope Alexander VI

Lucrezia Borgia: is her bad reputation deserved?

A Victorian lady washing in the nude

In pictures: erotic postcards of the early 20th century

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert

Love before Prince Albert: Queen Victoria’s suitors

Adolf Hitler with his mistress, Eva Braun, in the early to mid-1940s. The pair married on 29 April 1945, the day before they committed suicide together. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Second World War

Eva Braun: life with Adolf Hitler

A souvenir for a burlesque adaptation of the classic opera 'Carmen' at the Gaiety Theatre, 1890. (Image by Bridgeman)

Victorian burlesque: cheap thrills for the chattering classes

Melvyn Bragg speaks to the History Extra podcast about the 12th-century love story of Heloise and Abelard. (Photo by Awakening/Getty Images)

Melvyn Bragg on Heloise and Abelard. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

1949: Clementine with husband Winston Churchill at Epsom racecourse for the Derby. (Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Second World War

6 surprising facts about Clementine Churchill

Portrait of a young woman believed to be Henry VIII's fifth wife, Catherine Howard. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

Did Catherine Howard commit adultery?

Sexing up history: how to study and tell the history of sex

Queen Victoria pictured c1862 during her period of mourning

Prince Albert: the death that rocked the monarchy

A man helps his partner to dress by lacing her corset. (Photo by Frank Martin)

Love in Georgian times. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

An illustration of motors and cycles in Kensington High Street, opposite Holland House, London, from the Illustrated London News, 1903. (Photo by The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Lonely hearts and holiday flings: a brief history of dating

The former Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson, for whom Edward gave up the throne in 1936, sparking a crisis that rocked the British monarchy. The couple are pictured here in 1939. (Photo by Keystone-France\Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

The 7 most romantic moments in history

A 19th-century portrait of Queen Elizabeth I. (Photo by Print Collector/Getty Images)

Elizabeth I’s love life: was she really a ‘Virgin Queen’?

Olivia Colman as Queen Anne in the film The Favourite, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. (Photo by Alamy)

The true history of The Favourite. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Britain's Prince William and Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, make the journey by carriage procession to Buckingham Palace following their wedding ceremony on April 29, 2011 in London. (Image by Matt Cardy/AFP/Getty Images)

Kate Middleton: a modern royal woman

The National Portrait Gallery attributed this unfinished portrait to Jane Austen’s sister, Cassandra, and dated it to circa 1810. (Universal History Archive / Getty Images)

What did Jane Austen really look like?

Queen Victoria, c1860s. Victoria attended her son's wedding in March 1863 wearing full mourning dress – her husband, Prince Albert, had died some 15 months earlier. (Photo by © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

Troublesome royal in-laws through history

A portrait of Henry VIII with Prince Edward, his son by his third wife, Jane Seymour. If the future Henry IX had survived, there may have been no cause for Henry to annul his marriage to Katherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn in 1533, says Amy Licence. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

6 royal births that changed the world (or could have)

Diana, Princess Of Wales, Prince William And Prince Harry visit Thorpe Park amusement park. (Photo by Julian Parker/UK Press via Getty Images)

How to raise a royal... with Tracy Borman

Portrait of Jane Seymour, third wife of Henry VIII, 1536. (Photo by Imagno/Getty Images)

Henry VIII's six wives in a different light

An engraving showing the story of the Three Living and the Three Dead

Inside the medieval mind

While young ladies may have been daydreaming of handsome film stars such as Cary Grant, pictured here kissing the cheek of Ingrid Bergman in a publicity still for the 1946 film ‘Notorious’, agony aunts were keen to bring them back down to earth. (Photo by John Springer Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

How to be a man: tips from 1930s agony aunts

A Campaign for Homosexual Equality rally held in London’s Trafalgar Square in 1974. The Sexual Offences Act of 1967 helped pave the way for activism such as this in the 1970s, says Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite. (Corbis via Getty Images)

The 1967 Sexual Offences Act: a landmark moment in the history of British homosexuality

A view of a calander showing the date, Friday the 13th. (Photo by William C. Shrout/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

10 historical superstitions we carry on today