Women's history

Sylvia Pankhurst is taken into custody

My history hero Emma Barnett chooses Sylvia Pankhurst (1882–1960)

A postcard showing for women hunting for a man with guns and dogs.

Why do women propose in a leap year?

Actress Emmy Goring and her husband Hermann

Nazi wives: the women beside Hess, Goebbels, Göring and Himmler

Historian Claire Wright (Photo by Susan Papazian)

Fighting for the vote

Nellie Bly

Around the world in 72 days: how journalist Nellie Bly became the real Phileas Fogg

Catherine de Valois is seen here marrying Henry V, who was 14 years her senior, as part of the 1420 Treaty of Troyes. Following Henry's death she wed Welshman Owain ap Maredudd ap Tudur, who is variously referred to as the queen’s steward, page or cupbearer. (Mary Evans Picture Library/Alamy)

Scandalous Tudor marriages: 7 women who braved royal wrath by marrying for love

Women queue for potatoes in a greengrocer's shop in London, c1945. (Photo by Ministry of Information Photo Division Photographer/IWM via Getty Images)

Second World War

Saving food, saving lives: rationing in the Second World War

American actresses Frances Dee, Jean Parker, Katharine Hepburn, and Joan Bennett playing the March girls in George Cukor's film adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's 'Little Women', 1933. (Photo by RKO Pictures/Courtesy of Getty Images)

“Fresh and full of soul”: the history of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women

Mandy Rice-Davies (left) and Christine Keeler

Notes on a scandal: revisiting the Profumo Affair

British nurse Florence Nightingale (1820–1910), aka the 'Lady with the lamp', makes her rounds during the Crimean War. (Photo by Illustrated London News/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The lady with the stats: how Florence Nightingale’s nursing by numbers is still influencing today’s healthcare

Colour portrait of Jane Austen

A brief guide to Jane Austen, plus 8 things you (probably) didn’t know about her

Eleanor of Aquitaine's tomb in Fontevraud Abbey, Loire, France (Photo by Alamy)

Eleanor of Aquitaine: myth and reality

Queen Elizabeth I

“All unperfect and incorrect”: Tracy Borman on the discovery of an Elizabethan gem

Eleanor of Aquitaine depicted in a 12th-century prayer book

The real Eleanor of Aquitaine: 5 myths about the medieval queen

A portrait of Isabella I of Castile. (Photo by PHAS/UIG via Getty Images)

Isabella I of Castile: Europe’s greatest queen?