The Erotic Map of Great Britain

Every scandal has an address.

A queen falls for a tall, lute-playing young lord in a Fife castle, and it costs her a crown. A duchess shares her husband, her home and her best friend for twenty-five years. Georgian rakes bring 'nuns' from London to their chalk caves, a Holborn coffee-house marries men to men in a room upstairs, and a Regency 'governess' is said to have built a machine for the sole purpose of flogging.

Britain likes to pretend it doesn't do sex. The evidence says otherwise. It is carved on church walls, cut into chalk hillsides and written up, in loving detail, in police reports and private diaries. This book takes you to the door of every one of them: royal bedchambers and poets' love nests, pleasure gardens and molly houses, bagnios, brothels and the clubs of Soho after dark.

• 65 stories, 108 places, 15 tours
• Phone map tours: scan a QR code in the paperback and the route opens on your phone
• The Spiceometer: every place rated from 1 (chilled) to 5 (scorching)
• Each place comes with today's council, an Ordnance Survey grid reference and directions
• 43 pen-and-ink plates, each with a small map showing where it happened

The paperback: 392 pages, 7 × 10 in, black and white interior, ISBN 9798141426216. Also on Kindle. Popular history and travel, witty and factual. For adults (18+).

Explore before you buy: the online Erotic Map of Great Britain is free, with every place pinned.