Now who's selling off Princess Margaret's sex book?

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Among the 550 books for sale on 5 October is an 18th century sex guide called The Delights of Wisdom Concerning Conjugial [sic] Love. It was given to Princess Margaret in 1955 - a year after the public scandal over her wish to marry Group Captain Peter Townsend and five years before she married photographer Lord Snowdon.

The book also discusses " scortatory" love - the love of adultery - with sections headed Fornication, Concubinage, the Lusts of Defloration and Seducing Innocents.

Princess Margaret divorced her husband in 1978 after an affair with Roddy Llewellyn, a gardener in his twenties.

A spokeswoman for Bloomsbury Auctions said: "It is an advice book and includes chapters on the causes of separations and divorces in marriages."

The princess's personal copy of the Story of Peter Townsend, a life of her former lover, is also for sale, complete with original cloth spine and "finger soiling".

The revealing sale gives a glimpse of the reading habits of the princess, whose collection includes works by PG Wodehouse and Iris Murdoch.

The spokeswoman said: "This is not very highbrow stuff. There is quite a mixture, with a lot of romantic poetry, quite a few paperbacks and second-rate thrillers.

"They are the staple diet of an English country house - books that would be put away for a rainy day."

Rupert Powell, managing director of Bloomsbury Auctions, refused to say who is selling the books. A spokeswoman for Princess Margaret's son Viscount Linley said the books did not belong to him or any his family. The collection is expected to fetch about £1,350 but an auction of Princess Margaret's personal possessions this summer made £13.6 million - 10 times more than expected.