The Incredible Lives of the Bad Women of History

Written with quick wit and academic rigour, Whores, Hussies and Harlots is a bold new feminist history from Katie Charlwood, host of the Who Did What Now? Podcast

You know her kind — licentious, uninhibited, and often downright evil. She’s engaged in many an amorous congress and she’s always the subject of salacious gossip. She’s been given a million different names – strumpet, bawd, jezebel – but not a single one is complimentary.

History would have us believe it is in a woman’s very nature to sin. From the moment Eve defied the word of God with a bite of an apple, to Anne Boleyn’s troublemaking in the Royal Court, all the way to the media massacre of Monica Lewinsky in the late 20th century, countless women have been branded and slandered with the damning label of ‘Whore’.

But ‘whore’ or ‘harlot’, ‘tart’ or ‘tramp’, ‘floozy’ or ‘fornicatrix’, each woman has her own story to be told.

Katie Charlwood’s Whores, Hussies and Harlots is an exploration into the ‘fallen women’ of history. Crossing several civilisations, Charlwood examines how derogatory labels have repeatedly been used to control the ‘fairer sex’. Charwood re-evaluates the lives of these fascinating women, and allows them to claim their true place in the history books.