Sex

High life

7 October 2017 9:00 am

The death of the richest woman on this planet, as the tabloids dubbed Liliane Bettencourt, brought back some vivid memories,…

The joy of sex

12 August 2017 9:00 am

Your typical Trollope-loving, Brahms-bothering Spectator reader probably won’t be aware that the most recent winner of Big Brother was a…

Ladies first: Nicole Kidman as Miss Martha in Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled

This charming man

15 July 2017 9:00 am

Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled is set during the American Civil War and is about a wounded Union solider, Corporal John…

Taking the Kamasutra seriously

21 May 2016 9:00 am

The rough English translation of Kamasutra is pleasure (kama) treatise (sutra). In the West, since it was first (rather surreptitiously)…

Modern feminists should come to me if they want the truth about sex

9 April 2016 9:00 am

   New York Even after all these years, I’m still at times floored by the scale of the place. And…

Mind your language: From body fluids to ‘gender fluid’

2 April 2016 9:00 am

Benjamin Franklin thought that an excess of electric fluid gave rise to positive electricity, and a deficiency of the fluid…

Now that's what I call sex: Birmingham Royal Ballet's Ashton Double Bill reviewed

5 March 2016 9:00 am

That joke about the young bull who tells the old bull, ‘Hey, Dad, see all those cows — let’s run…

Back in Time for the Weekend gives the 1950s its usual kicking

6 February 2016 9:00 am

When the time comes to make programmes looking back on the 2010s, I wonder which aspects of life today will…

How they tried (and failed) to make ‘La Marseillaise’ nicer

21 November 2015 9:00 am

Friendly words England football fans sang ‘La Marseillaise’ in a friendly match at Wembley. The anthem has not always been…

We’re not more genderfluid now. We’re just duller about it

7 November 2015 9:00 am

Sex has always been less binary than it looks – but we’ve never been this boring about it

Hughes in 1986: Bate simply fails to make the case his book stands on – that the poet was a sadist

An unauthorised, and unconvincing, biography of Ted Hughes

3 October 2015 8:00 am

Craig Raine says that Jonathan Bate’s unauthorised biography of Ted Hughes gets it wrong on every level

Woody Allen and Diane Keaton in Manhattan

Woody Allen: a life of jazz, laughter, depression —and a few misdemeanours

26 September 2015 8:00 am

Woody Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg), the prolific, Oscar-winning auteur, New Orleans-style jazz clarinettist, doyen of New York delicatessen society,…

Novel romance: Richard Madden as Mellors and Holliday Grainger as Constance Chatterley

Guns, tools and toffee apples - but no nudity: BBC1’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover reviewed

12 September 2015 9:00 am

It’s hard to know whether the actor James Norton was being naive or disingenuous when he claimed in publicity interviews…

How common is adultery? Much more common than getting caught

29 August 2015 9:00 am

How many cheats? More data on members of extramarital dating site Ashley Madison were put online. How widespread is adultery?…

How many asexuals are there?

22 August 2015 9:00 am

No sex, please Several friends of the late Sir Edward Heath asserted that he could not be guilty of sexually…

Bisexuality is now everywhere – and nowhere

22 August 2015 9:00 am

I’m not aware of knowing many bisexual people. Or indeed, off the top of my head, any bisexual people. Which…

The uglier the man, the uglier the attitude

22 August 2015 9:00 am

The uglier the man, the more he demeans women

Why does TV assume everyone is so thick they have to have everything explained?

22 August 2015 9:00 am

My favourite moment in The Scandalous Lady W (BBC2, Monday) was when the heroine played by Natalie Dormer was shown…

‘Asexual’ used to mean something even creepier than ‘Edward Heath’

22 August 2015 9:00 am

There was a time when my husband, who often addresses the television, would habitually react to Edward Heath’s appearance on…

You can do anything (but you shouldn’t): the brave new world of internet morality

25 July 2015 9:00 am

Going online does not make you invisible – as the adulterers who used the hacked site Ashley Madison are discovering

John Waters: ‘I’m a good uncle — I’ll get you an abortion, I’ll get you out of jail, I’ll take you to rehab.’

John Waters interview: ‘We can’t make fun of Bruce Jenner?’

11 July 2015 9:00 am

No one does transgression like the filmmaker John Waters. Jasper Rees talks to him about political correctness, post-ops and pubes

The chemically castrated are useless at crosswords: true or false?

11 July 2015 9:00 am

After hitting me with the cancer diagnosis, the urologist offered me the choice of a longer life in exchange for…

Are schoolgirls still fair game for teachers?

20 June 2015 9:00 am

Mr Malcolm Layfield, the former violin teacher at Chetham’s music school, will have been celebrating this week after being found…

Tinder went looking for fresh flesh – and accidentally found me

2 May 2015 9:00 am

Can mobile dating apps move beyond the promise of a one-night stand?

Dear Mary: When is it all right not to bring something to a dinner party?

14 March 2015 9:00 am

Q. A wonderful and generous woman invites me, on a regular basis, to dinner parties at her house. What is…