Quiet, clever, sensible Virginia Fly, still a virgin at thirty-one, harbours erotic thoughts of an intensity and vividness unimagined by her suburban parents, her unassuming elderly suitor Hans or even her virile American pen-friend of twelve years, Charles Whitmore Oakhampton Jr - Charlie. When Charlie announces that he is, at last, to visit England, it seems too much to hope that he should make Virginia's dreams of passion reality. Yet his arrival coincides with her appearance on a television documentary and suddenly Virginia is presented with a bewildering variety of opportunities to rid herself of her virginity.

The only question remaining seems to be whether any of them - even the suave and delicious stranger Ulick Brand - could possibly fulfil her considerable expectations.

Huth is the daughter of the actor Harold Huth. She left school at age 16 in order to paint and to study art in both France and Italy. At 18 she travelled, mostly alone, across the United States before returning to England to work on a variety of newspapers and magazines. She married journalist and travel writer Quentin Crewe and soon became known most for her writing, having written three collections of short stories and eleven novels. She also writes plays for radio, television and stage, and is a well-known freelance journalist, critic and broadcaster. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.