Harlots, Whores and Hackabouts by Kate Liste: an amusing ‘smutty guidebook’

Kate Lister’s 2020 book, 

Kate Lister’s 2020 book, A Curious History of
Sex and her website Whores of Yore established her as an
irreverent and outspoken authority on the subject, said Gerard
DeGroot in The Times^[1]. Her new tome is “a more
serious book about the history of sex for sale”.

Lister travels far and wide – from classical Greece to medieval
London, from Renaissance Italy to Nazi Germany – and encounters “a
few recurring and disturbing truths”. Sex has always been “a
popular commodity, but one that provokes shame and censure”. And in
their attempts to restrict or eradicate the sex trade, governments
have invariably targeted sellers rather than customers.

Many of their punishments have been draconian (in medieval
Bologna, prostitutes had their noses cut off), but none have ever
worked: the demand to buy sex “never dies”, and “nor does poverty”,
which motivates women to enter the trade. Punishment simply forces
the practice underground, into places such as Codpiece Alley and
Sluts’ Hole in 14th century London, or Ponte Delle Tette (the
Bridge of Tits) in Renaissance Venice.

Lister’s book is filled with lavish illustrations, said Kathryn
Hughes in The Guardian^[2]. A Pompeii fresco of the
god Priapus “carefully weighing his own penis” gets a full page.
There’s a photo of Edward VII’s “Love Chair”, a contraption that
allowed the king to manoeuvre his “walrus-like bulk” without
squashing the woman (or women) beneath.

“Pleasurable” though the pictures are, they don’t always connect
very obviously with what is ostensibly the book’s main theme:
prostitution through the ages and its links with “poverty, disease
and coercion”. Harlots, Whores and
Hackabouts makes an amusing “smutty guidebook”, but it is
“strangely unsatisfying” as a history of commodified sex.

Thames & Hudson 256pp £25; The Week
Bookshop^[3] £19.99

The Week Bookshop

To order this title or any other book in print,
visit theweekbookshop.co.uk^[4], or speak to a
bookseller on 020-3176 3835. Opening times: Monday to Saturday
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