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)

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.

Learn more

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.

Learn more

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.