Sex and love

A Maria Spilsbury painting of a group sat at a drawing room table

Romance and reality in Jane Austen’s world

Queen Victoria of Great Britain with her husband, Prince Albert, and their nine children. (Photo by Rischgitz/Getty Images)

Queen Victoria’s children

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

Katherine Parr (also Catherine), the sixth and last wife of King Henry VIII, c1543. Engraving after a portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger. Katherine was no middle-aged frump but a clever, devout and passionate wife, says Derek Wilson. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Katherine Parr: the truth about the wife who ‘survived’

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

The real reason Jane Austen never married

The Spanish Princess, starring Charlotte Hope as Catherine of Aragon, charts the story of the woman who married into the Tudor dynasty. (Image credit: Starz)

The real history behind The Spanish Princess

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?

Henry VI of England. (Photo by iStock/Getty Images)

Henry VI may have had a “sex coach” – plus 4 more curious facts about his life

Katherine of Aragon, the first wife of Henry VIII. National Portrait Gallery, London. (Photo by PHAS/UIG via Getty Images)

The lost heirs of Henry VIII: Alison Weir on Katherine of Aragon’s failed pregnancies

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

mary-boleyn-portrait-2-63c21a3

Henry VIII’s mistresses: who else did the Tudor king sleep with?

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