Hilarious miscellany of sex advice throughout the ages from seven-week long Balinese foreplay and Victorian Viagra to swinging tips from the 1970s.

It is one of the oldest questions in the world: How do you do sex? And it has prompted some of the most stupid answers in human history.

Since the dawn of civilization, a bizarrely eccentric host of self-appointed experts has befuddled, frightened and confused questioners by selling them bull about the birds and bees.

Ancient Chinese Viagra was made from wasps. Medieval Indian advice books warned lovers never to have sex in front of the priest or in the middle of the road. Middle-Ages Britons claimed drunkenness was the best way to conceive, while Persians thought they could enlarge themselves with ginger and honey.

And as for the Victorians and Edwardians, hot blankets were the devil's work, banisters should be banned and tight corsets could cause nymphomania. The odd playful slap wouldn't do any harm though.

Here, then, is the cream of thousands of years of advice on where, when and how to put it, how to receive it, what to spread on it first and how to spend your time after it's all over. It makes you wonder how humankind ever got this far.