I bought this book at a discount shop out of idle curiosity because it was going cheap, beautifully designed and well illustrated: it was not to swell my porn collection because I don't have one.

However, my daughter was exceedingly shocked and disapproving, grabbing the book and devouring it with squeals of excited outrage and then thrusting it on her friends, who also studied it with noisy horror.

The irony is that less than 18 months later that same daughter went to stay in Amsterdam with her boyfriend for a few weeks and returned with a camera full of shots of the two of them at the sex Museum, sitting on giant penises [penii?] and the rest of it.

The book really is beautifully put together and of the finest quality: and although ornate ivory dildos and pornograhic snuffboxes don't really do it for me, this is a fascinatringly interesting read and an examination another side of that most salacious and interesting human imperative, sexuality ( )