The book is elegantly written, with a lightness of touch that makes it a pleasure to read.

IT IS TEMPTING to reach for the adjective “magisterial” to describe this book. It certainly meets several of the relevant criteria: broad in scope (ancient Greece to the present), leisurely in execution (just short of 700 pages in all), exhaustively researched (800 primary and secondary sources consulted) and the work of a distinguished senior scholar, recipient of many awards and honours. The book is not so much a history of sex in Christianity as a history of Christianity that contextualises issues of sexuality and gender within broader social and political developments. As a result, there is much to learn here at points where sex is temporarily in the background.

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