There are those people who assert - and we know what they mean - that the nudist films have nothing to do with sex. Well, it may be so for some, but not for others. "The Garden of Eden", appropriately enough, was the first of the nudist pictures in Britain. It appeared in January 1957 and featured Jamie O'Hara. The film was sent around to the local authorities - "They didn't object, and there was considerable public acceptance of the picture, which opened the screens to nudity."

It is thought that Giorgione and Titian were the first painters to use a reclining nude woman as the subject of a painting. Where, before their time, such a position occurs, as on some Roman sarcophagi, the figure is only a detail, filling in the corners to complete the design.

The use of the nude woman in such a way was secondary to the main design. Giorgione and Titian in both sculpture and painting elevated the reclining nude to a significant status, and this is the teeth of opposition from the Christian Church to all things carnal.

The first time that a woman appeared on the stage completely nude was at the Folies-Bergere in 1912.

She was only visible for a moment. It was feared that a scandal would follow but France survived, and after the war every Paris revue featured at least one naked woman.

It has been claimed that the French photographer Lerebours photographed some nudes as early as 1840, only one year after the historic introduction of Daguerre's process (P. Lacey, "The History of the Nude in Photography"). It was suggested that the interest in the nude at this period was not only aesthetic- professional models were among the first live subjects capable of holding a pose for the required five to ten minutes. The Parisian photographers, Nadar and Durieu, were among the first in the world to photograph nudes.

There have been a number of distinguished female photographers of the nude in the twentieth century, including Emy Andriesse of Holland, and Nell Dorr and Ruth Bernhard of the United States. Miss Bernhard's work is the best known, having appeared regularly in magazines and books over the last three decades.

She has been quoted as saying -

There are nudes and nudes. Some are desiccated and sexless, others jaunty and provocative.

According to one authority (E. Carr, "European Erotic Art"), the first nude of the Renaissance - a nude that is "not unaesthetic and submissive, the usual appearance of the Byzantine and mediaeval Eves" - is Lorenzo Ghiberti's Eve on the eastern door of the Baptistry in Florence, sculptured in relief in 1425.

In 1913, the first-known calendar nude appeared, called "September Morn", a reproduction of an oil painting,"Matinee Septembre", by a French artist, Paul Chabas (1869-1937).

The painting might have gone unnoticed if Comstock, of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, had not demanded the removal of the painting from the window of a New York art gallery. A salesman explained that the painting had recently won a Medal of Honour from the French Academy, but we may presume, Comstock was not impressed.

The first nude photography magazine was "Camera Work", founded in 1902 by Alfred Stieglitz. Not all the pictures were of nudes, but nude photographs were frequent, usually in portfolios by such photographers as Annie Brigman, Clarence Whitehead, Robert Demarchy, Renee Le Begue and Frank Eugene.

The treatment was such as to suggest "feelings and associations beyond the actual subject." In particular, "Camera Work" included studies by the Photo-Secessionists.

It all depends what you mean ... In various parts of ancient Greece the brassiere, in one form or other, was employed; paradoxically, in view of the free attitudes towards mixed nudity, naked athletics and the like, brassieres have been associated with the ancient inhabitants of Sparta. They were also used in China and elsewhere.

The prehistoric sculptures such as the Venus of Willendorf are among the oldest to show the nude female figure. Such works are generally dated to palaeolithic times.