LSF Publications: spanking fiction ebooks

Going to See Sir Geoffrey
London has a certain tawdry appeal for North American spanking enthusiasts. The Soho porn shops are chock full of spanking mags, books and videos. The phone booths are plastered with sex-ads inviting Headmasters to attend to naughty schoolgirls who are waiting for them, bent over their desks, any time of the day or night. Ann Summer's sex-shops offer mini-skirted uniforms for would-be maids and nurses, head-to-toe PVC outfits for budding Superwomen, and all manner of leather-goods for men who would worship at their feet.

These venues aren't buried down back alleys; they're cheek-by-jowl with mainstream British culture. The major bookstore chains have more D/s paperbacks on open display than can be found in the restricted sections of Adult bookstores in my home town. London boasts several of the greatest bookstores in the English-speaking world: Dylan's, Blackwell's, Foyles and Waterstones. On several floors, you can pore over the latest titles from the top academic presses, then wander down to the Erotica section to check out your favourite bedtime reading...

In Britain, erotic discipline is firmly ensconced in the bosom of the body politic. The French dubbed it 'le vice anglais' and they weren't joking. Many analysts have speculated that Margaret Thatcher's popularity as a righteous scold was based in part on the fantasy of being sent to the Headmistress' office for a tongue-lashing - or worse. Her mantra was 'no pain, no gain', and her most ardent supporters were upper-class men who attended elite schools where, in their student days, the cane was in regular use. Thatcher derided Cabinet Ministers slightly to her left as 'Wets'. Two have written memoirs in which they recall incurring the Iron Lady's wrath and having to report to Whitehall for verbal thrashings that went on for an hour or more. Despite such humiliations, they remained loyal to the bitter end. Might their unrequited fidelity be explained in part by the enthralling appeal of the strict Matriarch for wayward bourgeois lads?

The combination of sexual prurience and ruling-class moralism creates a culture in which erotic discipline flourishes, in which the synapses of pleasure and pain become fused and confused. It dates back a long way. From Swinburne on, flagellation themes have always figured prominently in English pornography. Today, the country's tabloids keep the home fires burning. Their stock-in-trade is the sex-scandal, where they make the traditional Christian connection between "sins of the flesh" and their public expiation. The tabloids are modern-day equivalents of stocks, ducking stools and whipping posts in the town square - scourging and titillating the public simultaneously. The kinks of the high and mighty are ruthlessly exposed. Aristocrats, vicars, novelists, sports stars, Cabinet Ministers, and half the House of Lords, it seems, have all found their illicit affairs and erotic predilections splashed across the front pages of the mass-circulation dailies.