In order to research this entertaining and copiously illustrated history of how people have used nakedness, Philip Carr-Gomm visited Cap d'Agde in France, where some 40,000 people enjoy life au naturel. There he danced naked with a witches' coven and bared all as a life model, an experience that helped him "gain access to a deeper sense of self". Carr-Gomm shows that people strip off for a variety of reasons, from finding God and performing magic, to gaining votes and protesting against injustice. Lady Godiva's naked protest against taxation in 11th-century Coventry may be apocryphal but, as the Californian anti-war group "Breasts not Bombs" have showed, getting naked is an effective way to spread a message. Nowadays, you can dine out nude in New York or Edinburgh, sunbathe naked in city-centre parks in Munich or Berlin, skydive nude, fly to your holiday nude or ski in the altogether in Austria. Being naked might, as John Updike said, "approach being revolutionary". But as someone else puts it, "to undress is to expose our story". And, even today, that takes courage.