Close-up: Maxine Peake

It's a wonder that Maxine Peake knows what day of the week it is, given the amount of time-travelling she has been doing of late. Not content with challenging Victorian mores on a weekly basis as the ambiguous Miss Wade in the BBC's Dickens adaptation Little Dorrit, she is also now on our screens fighting for social change in 17th-century England in Channel Four's much anticipated Civil War drama The Devil's Whore.

Peake is best known for her role as feisty Veronica in Shameless but what unites her diverse body of work, which also includes controversial turns as Myra Hindley and John Prescott's diary secretary/lover Tracey Temple, is her consistent choice of strong female characters. In The Devil's Whore, Peake plays the formidable Elizabeth Lilburne, wife of John, the leader of the Levellers movement.

"She's the embodiment of the idea that behind every great man is a great woman," she explains. "Conventional history focuses on him, so I was drawn to her side of the story. John spent years in prison, so she was left alone to bring up her family and continue the struggle. She was incredibly driven."

Immersing herself in the social history of a period largely neglected in popular TV drama proved an eye-opener: "At school you get taught about the Cavaliers and the Roundheads but there was so much more going on at the time in terms of the working man. The struggles are the same ones that many people still face – class systems, financial difficulties – we just dress differently. A few revolutionary stirrings might not be a bad thing."

'Little Dorrit' continues on BBC1. 'The Devil's Whore' is on Channel Four on Wednesdays at 9pm