"We were small people, our parents grateful to have survived": my memories of a 1950s childhood. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.
Did Mary really have a little lamb? The strange story behind the world-famous nursery rhyme
The ancient Egyptians loved pubic wigs – and now they’re making a comeback
From magic spells to dirty graffiti: 16 surprising facts about sex in the classical world. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.
MembershipaudioFrom plague 'searchers' to strawberry birthmarks: a history of women's bodies. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.
"No votes, no golf!": how the suffragettes made sport a political battlefield. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.
Women in science
6 women in science history you (probably) didn’t know about
On International Women’s Day, science journalist Angela Saini profiles six tenacious women through history whose advocacy and research rocked the scientific establishment and transformed existing preconceptions about gender and ability
Marie Curie: the woman who stirred up science. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.
Marie Curie’s discoveries of strange, glowing radioactive elements rocked Victorian Europe. But, as Jheni Osman reveals, the ground-breaking work that made her famous also led to her demise
Why Florence Nightingale was so much more than the ‘Lady with the Lamp’. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.
The image of Florence Nightingale floating angelically along hospital corridors bearing a beacon of light has gone down in history. But does this simplistic image obscure a much more impressively complex life and career? Mark Bostridge reveals more about her achievements
History heroCathy Newman chooses Beatrice Shilling (1909–1990). This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.
Cathy Newman, journalist and broadcaster, chooses pioneering engineer and racer Beatrice Shilling as her history hero
What was life like for women in the past?
How to be a medieval queen: the realities of being a royal woman in the Middle Ages
Tudor women: what was life like?
What were women's lives like during the 17th-century plague?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.
7 things you (probably) didn’t know about Roman women
Women in the French Revolution: fighting for equality
MembershipaudioWomen who served in WW2. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.
Women's history podcasts
MembershipaudioSex, romance and rights: women's lives since 1950. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.
MembershipaudioRadical women. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.
MembershipaudioWomen who served in WW2. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.
MembershipaudioNjinga: queen, warrior, diplomat. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.
MembershipaudioFrom hysteria to wandering wombs: women and medicine through history. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.
MembershipaudioWhy are we fascinated by ‘evil women’?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.
Royal women
Queen Elizabeth II50+ facts about her life and reign
Everything you need to know about Queen Elizabeth II's life and reign – from facts about her coronation and jubilees to her reign in numbers...
Queens know best: survival lessons from powerful historical women. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.
As we navigate modern life, it is sometimes easy to forget there are many timeless tactics to be learned from past historical figures – even more so when these figures happen to be women, who are so often consigned to more subservient roles. Here, Dr Estelle Paranque highlights three powerful women from history and the qualities they possessed…
Game of Queens: when women ruled Renaissance Europe
For more than 100 years from the late 15th century, women came to hold positions of power in Europe. Sarah Gristwood traces the intricate network of interrelated queens and regents
Elizabeth I: a guide to her life and rule, plus 7 facts you might not know
The daughter of Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth I (1533–1603) was England’s ‘Gloriana’ – a virgin queen who saw herself as wedded to her country and who brought almost half a century of stability after the turmoil of her siblings’ short reigns. Here, historian Tracy Borman reveals seven surprising facts about her life
Henry VIII’s six wives: your guide to the Tudor king's queen consorts
Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. It’s a mnemonic device many of us learned as children to remember the fates of the six women – Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard and Katherine Parr – who became Henry VIII’s queens between 1509 and 1547. But who were these women and just what did it take to catch the eye of a king?
The real Eleanor of Aquitaine: 5 myths about the medieval queen
Sara Cockerill explodes five of the myths that have grown up around one of medieval Europe's most remarkable women…
Women's history quizzes
QuizHow much do you know about medieval kings and queens?
Monarchy history quiz: test your knowledge of these kings and queens
QuizMonarchy: from William the Conqueror to the Windsors
QuizHow much do you know about Tudor Queen Elizabeth I?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.
Pioneering and inspirational women
'Queen of the Air': the remarkable life of pioneering English aviator Amy Johnson
Your guide to English aviator Amy Johnson, who was the first woman to make a solo flight from England to Australia...
MembershipaudioThree female civil rights pioneers. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.
Pamela Roberts discusses her research into three women activists of Washington’s ‘black elite’
Elizabeth BlackwellThe ‘first female doctor’, who entered medicine to prove a point
Elizabeth Blackwell is perhaps best known as the first woman to receive a medical degree in the US, but her story is broader than that of a trailblazer. Janice P Nimura, author of The Doctors Blackwell, considers why Blackwell became a doctor – and how she managed it at time when the world shuddered at the very idea of a woman in this role
20 inspirational quotes from women through history
HistoryExtra's digital section editor Rachel Dinning rounds up 20 inspirational and motivational quotes from some of the most world-changing women in history – from pioneering women like Marie Curie and Amelia Earhart, to literary greats Charlotte Brontë and Virginia Woolf...
My history hero: Rosa Parks (1913-2005). This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.
Author Ken Follett chooses civil rights activist Rosa Parks (1913-2005) as his history hero
Ada Lovelace: a visionary of computing
Ada Lovelace (1815–52) is today regarded as one of the most important figures in the early history of the computer. Here, biographer James Essinger explores her life and legacy...
Ida B Wells: civil rights activist and scourge of lynch mobs
The first female editor of a black American newspaper was also a major civil rights activist. Kira Cochrane introduces a courageous woman who fought to end lynchings