Sex and love

Queen Victoria with Prince Albert and their children in 1846. After a painting by F Winterhalter. Victoria’s husband Albert “carved out for the crown a moral kind of authority as the nation’s first and model family,” says Sarah Gristwood. (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)

Retaining the royals: why has the British monarchy survived – and thrived?

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

Henry VIII’s six wives in a different light

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

Inside the medieval mind

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Portrait of Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII, from a painting by Hans Holbein the Younger. (Photo by Time Life Pictures/Mansell/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

11 facts about Catherine Howard

Coca cola bottles from the 1990s

From Velcro to Viagra: 10 products that were invented by accident

Colour portrait of Jane Austen (1775–1817) drawn by her sister Cassandra. Dated 1810. (Photo by Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

8 things you (probably) didn’t know about Jane Austen

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

Portrait of Anne of Cleves

Anne of Cleves: Henry VIII’s most successful queen

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Mosaic in the Roman villa of Casale, near Piazza Armerina, Sicily, Italy, showing women exercising. (Photo by Peter Thompson/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

7 things you (probably) didn’t know about Roman women

Chastity belt decorated with a flower design and a heart pierced with arrows. (SSPL/Getty Images)

13 weird historical facts

Portrait of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. (Photo by Ken Welsh/Design Pics/Corbis via Getty Images)

Princely pleasures at Kenilworth: Robert Dudley’s three-week marriage proposal to Elizabeth I

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