Eleanor Tattersfield

IF there’s one thing publisher Eleanor Tattersfield knows more about than anyone else, it’s secrets about the nation’s sex lives.

That’s because for the past year people of all ages from all over the world have been sending the Exmouth Market shopkeeper and self-professed “Keeper of Secrets” their funniest, dirtiest and most artfully illustrated sex stories on the back of a postcard.

And now they are secrets no longer: on Wednesday Ms Tattersfield published Sex Secrets, the second instalment in a line of books beginning with the runaway success of her first, Lockdown Secrets, which has sold 20,000 copies.

Describing the eye-opening nature of her work, Ms Tattersfield said: “I learned a lot of things I didn’t know existed or didn’t know what it was called – rimming, pegging and squirting – but also I’ve learned lots about people’s predilections and how younger people in their 30s are so much more open and polyamorous and open to sex parties, and so much less prudish than we were and I was.”

The author added: “One of my absolute favourite postcards was from a woman in her 50s who decides to come to London and booked herself a ticket to an exclusive sex party and she says how she was spanked and tied up and had a threesome and ‘then I went home and in the morning I had breakfast alone in my hotel room and went to the V & A’. It was obviously a very cultural visit. She had everything covered.”

Ms Tattersfield’s day job is running a stationery and print shop in Clerkenwell’s design district; the enterprising author says she accosted some of her customers, who perhaps wandered in simply looking for a birthday card, and thrust a postcard about pegging at them.

A celebratory Instagram account, marbyandelm – named after her shop – has grown from around 6,000 followers two years ago to three times as many now.

Ms Tattersfield said Sex Secrets is the tip of the iceberg and she has now launched her website secrets.fm – in which she invites anyone to share their deepest desires and secrets.

Her book is not one of titillation, she said, adding: “It reveals a lot about humanity, and without sounding grandiose, people sharing something is such a brilliant connector and I think people really crave that.”