"Sexuality" may be an eighteenth-century coinage, but as this new study by award-winning historian Louise Foxcroft shows, it has fascinated and frightened us for millennia.

From proscription to prescription, and from humour to anxiety, Sexuality: All That Matters explores the vast sex-scape of experience and response over time.

Looking at authorised and unauthorised works on sexual knowledge, from scientific, religious, medical, philosophical and political ideas, to letters, diaries, court cases and medical histories, it reveals popular and orthodox assumptions as well as individual experiences, and reminds us of just how complex we really are.

This accessible book will appeal both to students and general readers, giving a compelling introduction to sexuality - and to what matters most about it.