The Kama Sutra, the 2,000-year-old sex manual, has been sexed-up for a 21st Century audience with a new app that enables couples to study its poses in 3D

This Parisian pied-à-terre for the Hollywood elite is sparkling once again – and now all are welcome, says Adrian Mourby

On 7 October, I recorded a long conversation with Christopher Hitchens in Houston, Texas, for the Christmas edition of New Statesman which I was guest-editing.

Reports of the auction of Elizabeth Taylor's estate this week all focus on the idea that the baubles, trinkets and voluminous silk kaftans "tell the story of her life and loves". And, of course, they do. The dozens of breathtaking jewels are a testament to her captivating beauty as a young woman, one any man would bankrupt himself for. Elizabeth Taylor was not someone who could be fobbed off with a Tiffany key ring.

Notebook

Juno Temple's parents are film royalty. But she has no qualms about exploring the seedier end of the spectrum. She tells Kaleem Aftab why

Juno Temple's parents are film royalty. But she has no qualms about exploring the seedier end of the spectrum. She tells Kaleem Aftab why

Richard Burton is to be recognised with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

At the outset, the American academic Deborah Lutz describes the impetus of this book in terms of the following question: "If we could be young sexual innovators and deviants out for action in Victorian London, how might that feel?" A snap response might be that, in terms of English usage, we couldn't possibly feel "out for action", a much more recent coinage. Pleasure Bound moves on to give us snapshots of 19th-century specimens of debauched and sexually outré behaviour – which means, in practice, all the usual suspects. The Pre-Raphaelites, Algernon Swinburne, Henry Spencer Ashbee, Richard Burton, Oscar Wilde are present and incorrect.

Even if you thought the internationally celebrated pageantry across London's streets last Friday counted as the most signficant wedding of recent times, Elizabeth Taylor's love affair with Richard Burton was surely "The Marriage of the Century", as this book's sub-title would have it. Their tumultuous, on-off love story, with the obligatory sad ending, cannot disappoint hard-core fans.