Julie Peakman

                             Author & Historian

Julie Peakman is an author and historian in eighteenth-century culture and history of sexuality. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and Honorary Fellow at Birkbeck College, University of London. She is a frequent contributor to newspapers and popular magazines, as well as academic journals. She has worked on television documentaries for the BBC, Channel 4 and the Biography Channel. She is also a novelist and playwright.

My Books

Some of my books:
Libertine London. Sex in the Eighteenth-Century Metropolis (2024)
Licentious Worlds. Sex & Exploitation in Global Empires (2019)
Hitler's Island War. The Men Who Fought for Leros (2018)
Amatory Pleasures. Explorations in C18th Sexual Culture (2016)
Peg Plunkett. Memoirs of a Whore (2014)
The Pleasure's All Mine. A History of Perverse Sex (2013)
Mighty Lewd Books: The Development of Pornography in 
Eighteenth-Century England (reprinted 2012, 2003) 
Emma Hamilton (2005)
Lascivious Bodies: A Sexual History of the Eighteenth Century (2004)
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My Life & Loves


Places

Travelling, history and people are my main loves and this has led to developing many broad-ranging interests. I will be starting a page on sex & civilisation from the places I have visited. 

Leros Island

Leros is one of my loves. I first visited when I was 17 years old and could not believe I had found the most wonderful place on earth. Many years later I managed to buy a peasant's hovel there and live there for part of my life.





Eighteenth-Century History

I love all thing eighteenth-century and this has been a source of enjoyment to me since undertook an MA in Women's History. I went on to research fro a PhD with the inspirational Prof Roy Porter on C18th erotica. 
People
Meeting lots of people at various gigs has led to some interesting invitations. I have listened to Spanish bands in  Masonic Lodges, run through jungles where the Viet Cong had been (not while I was there) and stayed in a couple of Maharajah's palaces.

I love the moon and the stars - and Maggie Aderin-Pocock who tells us all about exciting things happening in astronomy. I took this picture of the moon when we were on a star-gazing tour up in the mountains in La Palma.


Loves

My partner Jad Adams is also a historian, mainly working in the nineteenth-century 
www.jadadams.co.uk

          My Plays


The Unquiet Landscape

The Balloon Party

Facing Out: Monologue Series

My Eighteenth Century


Emma Hamilton
Peg Plunkett
Nancy Dawson
Harriette Wilson

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