'The proper course for those not desiring to bring children into the world is to practise complete and perfect continence in sex matters, or risk an eternity being smuthered in burning ordure.' Such opinions, regrettably, are all too common in 1925, and they are anathema to Amber Haldane, doughty campaigner for contraceptive rights. Amber wishes to free normal sex life from the shadows of repression and nasty-mindedness, and in the course of soliciting contributions for her campaigning periodical 'The Birth Control Monthly, ' she encounters the luminaries of the age: H.G. Wells, preoccupied by the appearance of mysterious green spheres in his apple trees; Havelock Ellis, architect of a sexological community in far-flung Japan; and Wilhel Reich, a valued colleague whose theory of orgastic potency is fundamentally misleading, damaging and wrong

A story of love, nuclear terror and Philip LarkinBorn at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, 'at the very moment when the world looked most as if it were going to blow itself up', Nicholas has spent his life in terror of atomic meltdown. Now, on the eve of his 48th birthday, he is on an overnight coach ride to join an anti-nuclear rally at Faslane in Scotland.His fellow travellers remind him of his younger self at Hull University in the 1980s -- a time he spent under the twin clouds of unrequited love and apocalyptic terror. As the coach rumbles through the night, the floodgates of memory open, and Nicholas begins to scrawl episodes from his past into a notebook. At first these memories -- sometimes poignant, sometimes comic, and often involving Philip Larkin -- appear almost random. But in time a picture emerges: of a thwarted first love, and a fragile mind struggling to keep hold of sanity in a world that seems headed for annihilation.This delightful, eccentric novel and its tragi-comic hero will be relished by mavericks and misfits, rebels and renegades the world over.

47-year-old eco-warrior Nicholas is on an overnight coach heading north to protest against a nuclear missile facility in Scotland. As the bus rumbles through the night, Nicholas scrawls episodes from his life into a notebook, painting a picture of thwarted love and a mind increasingly at sea in the world.

In this collection of literary anecdotage, Gary Dexter reveals the intriguing stories behind some of history's most celebrated books.