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BBC History, September 2017

Author article as featured in

BBC History, Christmas 2016

All in all this is a very readable, enjoyable and educational book and made me extremely thankful that I live in the 21st Century. However, I am not convinced we have made anything like the advances in understanding or tolerance that so many of us think we have.

Rear Party, Bitza

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Cercles

Riddell's book lifts the veil on historic sexual attitudes to illuminate the secrets of our ancestors' lives.
Written with wry humour in a pastiche of Victorian style, the book is both entertaining and highly informative.

Your Family Tree

Although Queen Victoria was supposedly prudish, she popped out nine tiny Saxe-Coburgs and the population more than doubled during her reign. We might think of the Victorians as sexually repressed, but they were clearly at it like stoats. In 'The Victorian Guide to Sex' Fern Riddell synthesises a wealth of material from marriage guides, newspapers, and the archives to bring us a more sophisticated and composite view of our ancestors.

[This book] is an enjoyable read and an informative survey of Victorian sexual tastes and preoccupations. Riddell knows her stuff and succeeds in presenting a rigorously balanced account of this complex subject. From her absorbing book, the Victorian era emerges as no less surprising or contradictory than our own.

Victorian Geek - blog.catherinepope.co.uk