Noël Coward theatre, London
Kit Harington and Olivia Washington star in a charged, often comical drama about the legacy of historical racial violence in three couples’ sexual dynamics

What happens in the bedroom, with all the power play between couples, is vital documentation in literature, said Doris Lessing in defence of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. It might be an old argument but it is an effective one in favour of Jeremy O Harris’s confrontation with race between the sheets.

The overarching idea behind his play is that historical racial violence lives on, somatically, through the generations and reveals itself in sexual dynamics. Its enactment is in its own outre league: rarely has a West End stage seen a giant black dildo employed on a Gone With the Wind-style four-poster bed, along with antebellum master-slave cosplay and a tongue-frenzy of sexualised boot licking.

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As a young woman, I had a powerful libido. A lot of inhibitions have surfaced since the menopause

I am a 63-year-old woman married to a man I love and find very attractive. I enjoy vaginal penetration, but struggle to engage in foreplay. I feel anxious and not especially aroused by having my breasts touched. Clitoral stimulation is almost unbearable and while penetration with fingers had been off the menu for a long time , with a lot of patience and talking I am now beginning to enjoy it once again.

I have had a lot of therapy to get over some very unpleasant sexual experiences and when I was younger my libido was powerful and less inhibited. It’s as if now, post-menopause, I have a less hormonally driven sex drive and old ghosts and inhibitions are revealed once more. How can I enjoy a wider range of sexual activity than penile penetration?

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Pierre Creton’s literary film is about the carnal blossoming of a gardener’s apprentice under the tutelage of a series of older men

This latest film from artist, film-maker, and farmer Pierre Creton evokes a tradition in French erotica in which a youthful protagonist has a series of encounters, providing carnal knowledge and sexual enlightenment as well as intellectual revelation. A Prince follows gardener’s apprentice Pierre-Joseph (Antoine Pirotte), whose love for nature leads him into the arms of two older lovers: Alberto (Vincent Barré), his botany school teacher, and Adrien (Pierre Barray), his employer.

Its literary feel is enhanced by the prioritisation of voiceover above dialogue. The characters’ inner monologues speak, often retrospectively, of transgressive erotic experiences and desires. Accounts of incestuous yearnings are laid over scenes of gardening or age-gap lovemaking, all shot in the same strikingly matter-of-fact fashion. The contrast between the provocative voiceover and the naturalistic cinematography is notable in itself, conveying a resistance to the politics of queer assimilation, which courts acceptance from the heterosexual majority.

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A rise in both seemingly opposing choices adds a layer of confusion to the way we conduct our most intimate lives

Three years ago, around this time as summer came with its wasps and heat, I wrote about the return of sex. We were just leaving lockdown – do you remember those days? Of hope and fear, when we had spent many months considering things like the importance and nuance of touch, the mysteries that were other people, the many conflicting facts of a strange, warm body? The adult world was preparing to step feverishly out of its house into the arms, beds and cars of other people, soft and diabolically gorgeous in a way only a pandemic really allows; their minds were dirty though their hands had never been so clean. And then, well, nothing.

As this summer finally arrives and we drag our bare legs through the thick yellow air, newspapers all over the world are breathlessly reporting the rise of celibacy. Yesterday, I sat on a step in the garden, among the strawberries we planted in lockdown, and my phone overheated as I scrolled through the memoirs of women who gave up sex, the articles on the politics of celibacy, the new descriptive terms, like “boysober”, the apologies from dating app Bumble after they mocked it, running ads that read, “Thou shalt not give up on dating and become a nun.” Lenny Kravitz made an announcement about his own sexual abstinence, explaining, “It’s a spiritual thing”, and Julia Fox said, “With the overturning of Roe v Wade and our rights being stripped away from us, [celibacy] is a way that I can take back the control. I just don’t feel comfortable until things change.”

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Friction in the fields is wreaking havoc in the bedroom for farmers and parents Rosie and Brian

How do you do it? Share the story of your sex life, anonymously

There is something hot about being a farmer, but working together is tricky – Brian can nitpick to a degree that doesn’t make a difference for the sheep

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Hollywood’s great survivor discusses his band, politics, family, embracing change and learning selflessness; as pornography use soars, we meet the men who feel their behaviour is moving from a compulsion to an addiction; and, last week, a job advert emerged for a private tutor to an architecture student with potential earnings of more than £2m. One man who has worked with wealthy families describes what it takes.

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House of the Dragon just made eyes pop with an erect penis – but it’s not the only show going to great lengths to challenge television’s nudity equality problem

It’s not just winter that’s coming. This week’s episode of House of the Dragon featured not one but two penises: one mid-fellatio, the other post-coital. If original fantasy epic Game of Thrones became known for “sexposition” – advancing the plot against a backdrop of bare bodies – its prequel seems to be dealing in “dicksposition”.

Just past the midway mark of episode three, as a tipsy King Aegon II Targaryen (Tom Glynn-Carney) arrived at a King’s Landing brothel with his jeering entourage, he strolled past a sizeable erection in the process of receiving a blowjob. The bratty monarch didn’t seem to notice. Viewers certainly did.

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Aoi and Jiro have regular intercourse – so how did they buck what seems to be a national trend?

When I was growing up, there was no talk of sex or relationships at home. It was all very secret

We didn’t sleep together the first time we met: to have sex on the first date would have been highly unusual

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Research on PCD has determined that people of all genders and sexualities have had such feelings after sex and masturbation

In 2009, a young woman went to the student clinic at Queensland University of Technology in Australia with a problem: after sex with her partner, she always felt sad. Sometimes it was a hollow feeling, like a “black hole opened up” inside her. Other times, it was more subtle, akin to “homesickness”. It never happened during or before sex, only after. She was confused because she loved her partner, and they were in a stable relationship. The sadness could last for over an hour.

“This was a very counterintuitive experience, because that’s not really what you expect,” said Robert Schweitzer, an adjunct professor in the Faculty of Health and the School of Psychology & Counseling at QUT. Schweitzer, who predominantly studied refugee mental health at the time, searched for mentions of post-sex negative emotions, and found very little research. But when he turned to Google, he found more than 50,000 websites that described post-coital blues or what’s now called post-coital dysphoria or PCD.

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