Burgo Partridge, son of Bloomsbury leading lights, Ralph and Frances Partridge, coolly and with learning tells the story of the social phenomenon of the orgy. The dictionary definition is "a wild gathering, marked by promiscuous sexual activity, excessive drinking etc" and Partridge tells precisely what that has meant in the various societies that have left records. The book starts with the Greeks, who celebrated sexuality at Dionysiac festivals and at temples to Aphrodite, and the Romans who imported brutalities into their orgiastic celebrations. In modern times orgies were a rebellion against strict sexual codes. The reader learns of the taste for group sex displayed by some medieval popes, the junketings of Restoration England, the aristocratic hedonism of the 18th century Hellfire club, Scotland's notorious Wig club, the orgiastic tastes of Casanova and the Marquis de Sade, down to the 20th century and the excesses of Aleister Crowley and Rasputin, "the mad monk".