Women's history

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Agrippina the Younger. (Photo by Alamy)

Agrippina the Younger: a Roman woman of great power . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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’?

Illustration of Isabella of France. From the book ‘Our Queen Mothers’ by Elizabeth Villiers. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

Isabella of France: the rebel queen

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English journalist and broadcaster Jenni Murray at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, 2017. (Photo by Roberto Ricciuti/Getty Images)

World-changing women . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A maid polishes a silver dish. Female domestic servants were highly vulnerable to sexual exploitation, but in Reformation France they found some ways to fight back. (Photo by: Christophel Fine Art/UIG via Getty Images)

The women who wouldn’t be silenced in Reformation France

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Petra Kelly. “Through sheer force of will, Petra Kelly put green politics on the map. Her success in Germany in the 1980s inspired green parties across the world to shake things up,” says Caroline Lucas. (Photo by Schulze-Vorberg/ullstein bild via Getty Images)

My history hero: Caroline Lucas chooses Petra Kelly (1947–92) . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Sir Godfrey Kneller's portrait of Anne Stuart. Following the 1707 Acts of Union, she would be queen of Great Britain and Ireland. (Photo by Getty Images)

“A charming, popular monarch”: Tracy Borman on Queen Anne

French writer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette and husband Willy, photographed c1902. (Photo by Apic/Getty Images)

Who was the real Colette?

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Max Adams. (Photo by Kona Macphee/Royal Literary Fund)

Remarkable women through history . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, supervises the removal of fittings from a room at Kensington Palace, which she had occupied as lady in waiting to Queen Anne of England. The wife of John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, and a trusted confidante to Queen Anne, she was politically highly influential until her dismissal in 1711. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

5 women who challenged the Westminster boys’ club in the 18th century

Queen Anne, based on a work by Sir Godfrey Kneller, c1702–10. Anne's reign saw women take centre stage in fierce political debates. (Photo by Bridgeman/National Trust Photographic Library)

Queen Anne’s feuding favourites

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Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire, England. (Photo by Getty Images)

The house that Bess built: the secrets of Hardwick Hall . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots

Deadly rivals: Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots

c1935: Beatrice Shilling sits astride her Norton motorcycle. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images)

5 “bloody brilliant” 20th-century women

Helen Duncan, a 20th-century medium and spiritualist, allegedly summoned spirits draped in ‘ectoplasm’ – organic matter emitted from her body. In the 1930s she was denounced as a fraud, and in 1944 prosecuted under the 1735 Witchcra Act, which forbade conjuring spirits. (Photo courtesy of Ashmolean Museum/University of London)

Conjuring up the dead: Helen Duncan and her ectoplasm spirits