TV COUPLE

More sex, please, we’re Victorian! Under the tightly laced corsets, they were really the Kama Sutra in crinolines. Fans of the ITV historical drama Victoria have blushed at its raunchy scenes, including sex on the beach and sneaky romps in side rooms.

We’ve gasped at the monarch’s insatiable desire for hubby Prince Albert – and at married Duchess Sophie of Monmouth’s antics with Joseph, the royal footman.

And how about Lord Palmerston, played by Laurence Fox, whose open marriage and numerous affairs shocked Jenna Coleman’s Queen Victoria?

As the third season ended last night, you may think things were sexed up for TV but the Victorians were anything but prim and proper. In fact, randy old Palmerston was nicknamed Lord Cupid at 78.

“The Victorians’ prudishness was only on the surface level,” says historian Dr Anne Hanley, consultant on Victoria and lecturer at Birkbeck, University of London. “They had a prurient fascination with all things sexual – scandals, adultery, homosexual liaisons – and lapped it up in a press which condemned them with one breath and titillated with another.”

Last night, the Queen and Prince Albert, played by Tom Hughes, revealed their Great Exhibition, an event which changed the era’s course.

But while Britain was busy conquering the world, it was also expanding its empire with sexual conquest. And as history shows, the Victorian stiff upper lip was a thinly disguised attempt to hide a society of sexual deviants in an era where child sexploitation, prostitution and niche carnal appetites were normal.

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