Rules Of Desire: Sex in Britain: World War 1 to the Present: Sex in Britain, World War I to the Present [Paperback]

"As diverting and as suggestive as a very good novel." -- "Independent on Sunday"
"Explores that dark meeting between private desires and society's moral rules." -- "Sunday Times"

‘Provocative…sharp-eyed history’

‘She explores that dark meeting between private desires and society’s moral rules…Haste is wonderfully even-handed in her treatment of the sexes’

‘Haste puts a fraught and complex subject into a cool, intelligent perspective and throws a lot of light into the darker corners of the generation gap’

'As diverting and as suggestive as a very good novel.temperate, balanced, subtle and humane' Maureen Freely, Independent on Sunday

The Free Love Debate; the sex psychologists; the Bright Young Things; homosexual life in the Thirties; secret sex and World War II; the Sixties and the pill; gay rights; rape laws; the impact of AIDS; the declining ideal of marriage; the new emphasis on relationships and 'whole body sensuality'.Beginning with the Edwardian theorists, like Edward Carpenter and Havelock Ellis, Cate Haste tells the history of changing sexual attitudes in twentieth-century Britain. Intimate private experience is set against well-known cases - from Lady Chatterley to Profumo, Thorpe and Archer - and against the dictates of the churches, courts and media. (20020531)

Cate Haste was born in Leeds. She is a television producer and director, and is married to Melvyn Bragg.