Despite the evident sexual attraction between them, Emma regarded the match in more idealistic terms, seeing it as a way of bridging the gap between black and white.

ECONOMIST: Africa is a continent made for��and of��storytellers

Dr Ethel Quayle, a lecturer in clinical psychology at the University of Edinburgh said that studies have done little to settle the question of what was more important to them - the easy availability of images or a latent sexual attraction to minors.

BBC: Studying the web's impact on sex offenders

Or maybe, despite there never having been the least spark of sexual attraction between us, despite the fact that we could have been locked in a closet for seven hours and nothing would have happened, maybe, for some reason, Jacob is trying to seduce me.

NEWYORKER: The Region of Unlikeness

And Endless Forms at the Fitzwilliam Museum, in Cambridge, considers how Darwin's ideas penetrated the consciousness of the great artists of the era, inspiring visual representations of the struggle for existence, of natural attraction and sexual selection, and the origin and descent of man.

BBC: Friday 11 September: Darwin special

Others suggest that couples who delay or abstain from sexual intimacy early on allow communication to become the foundation of their attraction, and that this helps to ensure that companionship and partnership keep them together when the initial flames of lust die down.

ECONOMIST: Chastity before marriage may have its uses after all

Fringe events might include philosophy lectures, poetry readings and sundry charlatans and cranks offering to predict the future, but the real added attraction of the games wasn't the cultural Olympiad but the sexual one.

WSJ: The Ancient Olympics: Mud, Sex, Hymns...Sports Too