Photo of Mabel Capper and Patricia Woodlock advertising a meeting, Manchester, Lancashire, July 1908

Women's history

'Pirate queen' Grace O'Malley. (Illustration by Sue Gent for BBC History Revealed)

Grace O’Malley: the fearless pirate queen of Ireland

Mary Seacole is best known for her work during the Crimean War, where she cared for injured soldiers. But she was also well-known as a hotelier, traveller and author – a celebrity of the Victorian era. This is a contemporary painting of her

Mary SeacoleVictorian celebrity, joyful hotelier and Crimean nurse

Nefertiti: wife, mother, pharaoh. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The women who fought back against Hollywood. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Rivalries and romances: couples that shook up history. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning: poet, activist, trailblazer, runaway. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A women drives oxen pulling a loaded wagon train through the Black Hills (in South Dakota or Wyoming) in 1887

From the real Calamity Jane to 'Madam Moustache': pioneer women of the Wild West

The forgotten mothers of civil rights leaders. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Paul Delaroche's impression of Lady Jane Grey's execution

Who was Lady Jane Grey? The tragic story of the 'Nine Days Queen'

Sex, romance and rights: women's lives since 1950. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A c1638 oil painting of Katherine Howard, Lady Aubigny

History heroJulia Donaldson chooses Katherine Howard, Lady Aubigny (d1650). This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Mary Tudor with her five stepmothers

Mary Tudor and her five stepmothers: what was their relationship like?

Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to receive a medical degree in the US

Elizabeth BlackwellThe ‘first female doctor’, who entered medicine to prove a point

Harriet Tubman (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad: how one woman saved hundreds from hell

Annie Gray portrait by Ian Farrell

Annie Gray“For Queen Victoria, food was a way of exploring the world”. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Princess Feodora (left), half-sister of Queen Victoria (right)

Princess Feodora: the little-known sister of Queen Victoria

Women queue for potatoes in a greengrocer's shop in London, c1945. (Photo by Ministry of Information Photo Division Photographer/IWM via Getty Images)

Saving food, saving lives: rationing in the Second World War

9 things you (probably) didn’t know about Helen Keller

Queen Victoria in her coronation robes.

Your guide to Queen Victoria and a timeline of her life – plus 16 fascinating facts

Portrait of Anne of Cleves

Anne of Cleves: Henry VIII's most successful queen?

A 19th-century engraving. A young woman plays a harp, singing a duet with a man holding the music book, Duets de L’Amour. (Photo by Historica Graphica Collection/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

A survivor's guide to Georgian marriage

Rege-Jean Page as Simon Basset and Phoebe Dynevor as Daphne Bridgerton

Bridgerton season one: “A period drama like no other”

Bridgerton: ripping up the rulebook on Regency romance. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

'Ma Rainey's Black Bottom' (2020): Viola Davis as Ma Rainey. (Photo by David Lee/Netflix)

Who was Ma Rainey, “mother of the blues”?

The effigy of Eleanor of Castile on her tomb

The love lives of medieval queens

Were the suffragettes terrorists?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Fern Riddell.

Fern Riddell"Can we call the suffragettes terrorists? Absolutely". This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Women in Greek myths. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A policewoman gives directions to tourists in London in the 1920s.

“Sherlock Holmes in skirts”: the world's first policewomen

Second World War

'Real life battleships': the secret game that countered German U-boat attacks during WW2