Women's history

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

The house that Bess built: the secrets of Hardwick Hall

Mary, Queen of Scots craved the throne occupied by her cousin Elizabeth I (pictured). Theirs was a relationship defined by plots, massacres, assassinations and ultimately, the executioner's sword. (Photo by Robert Alexander/Getty Images)

Deadly Rivals: Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots

Ada Lovelace “had a unique and farsighted insight into the potential of computers,” says James Essinger. (Photo by Getty Images)

Ada Lovelace: a visionary of computing

Engraved portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots. (Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images).

In profile: Mary, Queen of Scots

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

5 “bloody brilliant” 20th-century women

This illustration from a Women’s Social and Political Union poster condemns the force-feeding of suffragettes in 1910. Many women were subjected to this brutal procedure between 1909 and August 1914. (Museum of London)

Cat and mouse: force feeding the suffragettes

Elizabeth Jane Cochrane, who wrote under the pen-name Nellie Bly. (Photo by Interim Archives/Getty Images)

Who was Nellie Bly?

Princess Elizabeth, later Queen Elizabeth II, with her husband Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, after their marriage in 1947. (Corbis via Getty Images)

Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip: 8 milestones in their marriage

Marie Curie in her laboratory. (Photo by Time Life Pictures/Mansell/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

First World War

Marie Curie (1867–1934): her life, achievements and legacy

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

Pit Brow Lasses from an unknown colliery in Wigan, Lancashire, c1887. (Photograph by Herbert Wragg. Courtesy of the Trustees of the National Coal Mining Museum for England)

The ‘Pit Brow Lasses’ of 19th-century coal mines

An illustration of a group of supposed witches being beaten in front of King James VI and I, the most notorious royal witch-hunter of all time, c1610. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

A brief history of witches by Suzannah Lipscomb

A portrait of Jane Seymour, queen of England from 1536 to 1537 as the third wife of Henry VIII. Jane is remembered for being the only wife to provide Henry with a son and male heir (the future Edward VI). Jane died on 24 October 1537, most likely from puerperal, or childbed, fever. (Photo by Popperfoto/Getty Images)

In profile: Jane Seymour

Left: Historian Lucy Worsley at Kensington Palace, the childhood home of Queen Victoria, ahead of her interview for the History Extra podcast. Right: Queen Victoria sits for a portrait photograph. (Photo by W&D Downey via Getty Images)

Lucy Worsley on Queen Victoria: your questions answered