Sex and love

Podcast FB Nicola Tallis

Elizabeth’s love rival

A couple get amorous in this 14th-century illustration

Call the medieval sex doctor

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Nefertiti

Has the world been blinded by Nefertiti’s beauty?

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Lettice Knollys

Lettice Knollys: Elizabeth I’s nemesis

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Group portrait at a drawing room table by Maria Spilsbury (1777-c 1823). (Photo © Bonhams, London, UK / Bridgeman Images)

Romance and reality in Jane Austen’s world

An Athenian red-figure kylix (cup) dating from around 510–500 BC depicts a young pentathlete pulling his older lover towards him for a kiss. In many of the city-states of ancient Greece, sex between a man and a youth was an accepted – even idealised – form of love, its virtues extolled in works by writers including Plato. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

General ancient history

Pride and prejudice: same-sex relations through history

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A portrait of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert with five of their children, by Frederick Winterhalter. (Photo by © Historical Picture Archive/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

The Library Victoria and Albert: a marriage of misery?

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In pictures: erotic postcards of the early 20th century

Winston Graham's Poldark novels remind us of aspects of the past that might otherwise remain in the shadows, says Hannah Greig. (Image credit: Mammoth screen/BBC)

The real history behind ‘Poldark’ series three: episode nine

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

Portrait of Jane Austen (1775-1817). Private Collection. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

Austen’s influences: Lucy Worsley on the author’s life and work

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Jane Austen and Tudor London

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Jane Austen’s fiction: an accurate portrayal of life in Georgian England?

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What did Jane Austen really look like?