Sex
The summer of love
I spent it skipping about in tights, imagining women wanted me
The joy of less sex
I used to think nothing would ever be more important. I was wrong
Where to open your brothel: an international comparison
The best places to open a brothel The Commons all-party group on prostitution has called for a Scandinavian-style law where…
Is any kind of sex still taboo in literature?
Is there any kind of love that novelists still can’t touch?
Sex, secrets, and self-mortification: the dark side of the confessional
I have a confession to make. I really enjoyed this book. It’s been a while since I admitted something of…
I’m nearly 60. I’m still interested in sex. Is that a problem?
Have I become a dirty old man?
William S. Burroughs was a writer – not a painter, prophet, philosopher
William S. Burroughs lived his life in the grand transgressive tradition of Lord Byron and Oscar Wilde and, like all…
A creepy father, a lustful music teacher, four virgins — and one genuine love affair
London, 1794. It’s a different world from that portrayed by the Mrs Radcliffes and Anons of the time: rich young…
How Grand Theft Auto prevents crime and violence
It was about a week ago, at 8 p.m., when our blackout happened. In the 1980s people would have headed…
A secret sperm donor service in post-first world war London
The strange tale of how 500 women were helped to conceive after the first world war
Mind your language: Who says there's a 'correct name' for the penis?
In a very rum letter to the Daily Telegraph, the Mother’s Union of all people joined with some other bodies…
Less alcohol, fewer drugs: how the British seem to be shedding their harmful habits
Contrary to popular belief, Britons’ harmful habits seem to be on the wane
The Spectator’s Notes
On Tuesday night, at a Spectator readers’ evening, Andrew Neil interviewed me about my biography of Margaret Thatcher. He asked…
The unfair sex - how feminism created a new class divide
The rise of working women has created a new – and far less equal – world
Lord Rennard doesn’t need an inquiry. He needs a swift kick to the shin
I was seated at a rather stiff and formal BBC dinner a dozen or so years back, one of those…
Stop shouting at Hilary Mantel – there are real outrages to address
It started the other week, when David Cameron was in India. Although it started like a bout of malaria starts,…
Sorry, but Parliament is full of sex pests
In Westminster, ‘inappropriate behaviour’ is a way of life – and the Lib Dems are the worst offenders
Thinly veiled threats
A new kind of unrest is making itself felt throughout the Arab world. Women are beginning to assert themselves and voice their frustrations, says Caroline Moorehead
Of vice and verse
‘All human life is binary’, explains a Vestal Virgin to the time-travelling heroine of Ranjit Bolt’s verse novel, Losing It.…
Long life
Eight years ago I was in Rome for The Spectator to write a piece about the election of a new…
Bookends: A life of gay abandon
Sometimes, only the purest smut will do. Scotty Bowers’s memoir, Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex…
More sinned against than sinning
When I saw the title of this book, then read that it only covered the period 1600-1800 I hoped this…
Acting strange
Reviewing Lindsay Clarke’s Whitbread-winning The Chymical Wedding a small matter of 20 years ago, and noting its free and easy cast and wistful nods in the direction of the Age of Aquarius, I eventually pronounced that it was a ‘hippy novel’.
The French connection
If ever there was a novel to which that old adage about not judging a book by its cover could be applied, it’s this one.
Same old perversions
Memory Lane always looked so unthreatening to me.
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