The proper course for those not desiring to bring children into the world is to practise complete and perfect continence in sex matters, or risk an eternity being smothered in burning ordure.' Such opinions, regrettably, are all too common in 1925, and they are anathema to Amber Haldane, doughty campaigner for contraceptive rights. Amber wishes to free normal sex life from the shadows of repression and nasty mindedness, and in the course of soliciting contributions for her campaigning periodical The Birth Control Monthly, she encounters the luminaries of the age: ? H.G. Wells, preoccupied by the appearance of mysterious green spheres in his apple trees ? Havelock Ellis, architect of a sexological community in far-flung Japan ? Wilhelm Reich, a valued colleague whose theory of orgiastic potency is fundamentally Misleading, Damaging and Wrong. Gary Dexter's uproarious new comedy of manners will be relished by all devotees of sexual history and politics as well as by those who would agree that 'it is impractical for a working man to boil his penis before every act of coition.' AUTHOR: Gary Dexter is the author of 'The Oxford Despoiler', an acclaimed parody of Sherlock Holmes featuring the moustachioed sexologist Henry St. Liver, and his partner Olive Salter ("A masterful, perfectly pitched, nuanced and fiendishly funny Victorian detective memoir" Erotic Review) and of 'All the Materials for a Midnight Feast', a novel described by the Sunday Telegraph as "one of the year's most impressive debuts". He has also written several well-received works of non-fiction, including 'Why Not Catch-21?', about which Nick Lezard wrote in the Guardian: "Dexter's tone is consistently, and never irritatingly, droll. There are a few books that try to be funny about literature and don't ever really get it right; Dexter always does.'" Hear hear!
