BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | Britain's secret sex survey

His poem Annus Mirabilis famously links the start of the sexual revolution with the "Beatles' first LP". But the results of a survey into sexual attitudes and behaviour, conducted 14 years earlier, reveal the British had developed a hearty lust for sexual experimentation. Only, no one would openly discuss it.

In these liberated times, when sex is almost a constant undercurrent of everyday life, it's hard to imagine how much of a taboo sex once was.

Yet when a group of young researchers set out to probe British sexual behaviour in 1949 their findings were considered so outrageous they were instantly swept under the carpet; banished to the archives of a university.

Only now, more than 50 years on, have the results come to light, revealed in a new BBC programme. The findings show that the prim and proper façade of post-war Britain hid some remarkable truths about sexual attitudes and experience.

One in four men admitted to having had sex with prostitutes, one in five women owned up to an extra-marital affair, while the same proportion of both sexes said they had had a homosexual experience.">