Revealing Britain's Sexually Inspired Sites.

Covering five thousand years of landscape architecture, from Stonehenge and Avebury to eighteenth-century pleasure gardens and modern times, this irreverent, challenging and revealing investigation delves into the diverse history of Britain and Ireland's most stunning sexually inspired landscapes and monuments.

Thousands of people visit West Wycombe Park in Buckinghamshire each year but few realise that the gardens - created by Sir Francis Dashwood, founder of the Hell-Fire Club - are designed as an erotic tribute to the female form. A statue of Venus surmounts an ample grassy mound, at the base of which a stone facade spreads to either side revealing a narrow oval slit - the entrance to a secret subterranean grotto. West Wycombe Park was created at the height of a Georgian fashion for erotic gardens, yet the Georgians were by no means the first to indulge in such symbolism. Their acknowledgement and celebration of human sexuality on an oper-air stage followed a tradition that can be traced back to the builders of the earliest temples and standing stones. From prehistoric erotica to some surprising Victorian creations and twentieth-century sexually inspired landscapes, Catherine Tuck shows how the natural cycle of fertility has been a central preoccupation in human monuments. The results are sometimes awe-inspiring, sometimes shocking and often amusing.

268 mm x 200 mm

Hardback 246 pages