In Depth:  Tony Payne and Phillip Jensen

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Pure Sex

Tony Payne and Phillip Jensen

The sexual revolution of the 1960s only happened because of the teaching and claims of many predecessors. How do their claims stand up?

Gertrude Himmelfarb aptly describes the sexual atmosphere of the Bloomsbury Group as 'not only homosexual but androgynous, near-incestuous, and polymorphously promiscuous'. If their exploits had been known at the time, or even in the decades following, perhaps historians and commentators would not have been so quick to characterise Blooms-bury as embodying 'a life of rational and pacific freedom' or of 'reason, charity and good sense'.