Whores, hookers and history Romp and roll through history

ALL you schoolboys and girls pressing your pimples and deciding that history is a bore as well as bunk should read again - in particular Nickie Roberts' Whores in History - Prostitution in Western Society.

The book's inclusion on a General Certificate of Education (GCE) reading list would bring a new alertness to the back rows of the class and an uncommon teenage interest in Greece and Rome, absolute monarchy, the rise of the bourgeoisie and the Industrial Revolution.

More than one girl unlikely to pass these GCEs may take from the book some serious career counselling in a society suffering recession and high unemployment.

Roberts, an unqualified apologist for ''sex workers'' and their services, quotes the research results of American sociologist Lewis Diana who says: ''The only measurable difference between prostitutes and other women matched for education and economic background was that the prostitutes earned more money.'' Although delivered as a polemic, almost as vivacious as some of the girls involved, this book is 350 pages of chronological history which demands to be taken seriously. It gathers in everything, from the Sumerian Empire of 2500 BC to the sexual revolution of the '60s.

The economic, political and military changes throughout Greece, Rome, the Dark and Middle Ages, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution and the Victorian Age are all interpreted in the light of their effects on sexual mores in general and whores in particular.

It makes not just a racy read but a fascinating and original historical perspective over which pinches of salt should be applied as you go. It comes as no great surprise to learn that men and their patriarchy are all to blame, but you are historically wrong-footed to be told this is not the natural order of things and there were golden ages of matriarchy ruled over by benign whore goddesses in civilisations like the Gravethian-Aurignacian of around 25,000 BC and running up to the Superians of about 2,000 to 3,000 years ago.