Julie Peakman is a historian and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She is a frequent contributor to journals, magazines, and television documentaries on history, culture, sex, and feminism. She started life in the theatre as an actress and is currently writing her next book 'Libertine London. Sex in the Metropolis' while working on a musical based on her biography of Peg Plunkett, an C18th Irish brothel-keeper.