Two Oxford nuns have lifted the veil on their attitude to sex in a revealing new book, writes Reg Little. The sisters frankly discuss their sexuality, with one admitting how her body 'longs to give birth'. Both reject the idea that a woman's sexuality disappears immediately on entering a convent.

Sister Judith, 33, of the Sisters of Love of God Community, Oxford, says in the soon-to-be published book New Habits: "You do not bury your sexuality and you don't pretend it's not there."

She said it was a mistake for nuns to go on believing that sex was 'an area of our being that is somehow dodgy, unholy or unclean' because it was in fact 'God-given'. Sister Judith, who only leaves the community for medical reasons or to attend religious conferences, admits: "Of course my body longs to have children. This is part of my creation. I'm a 33-year-old woman. It's very difficult.

"I said to a sister once 'I'm dying to have children, so obviously I'm not meant to be a nun, am I?'. I expected the answer 'No dear, so go away and forget about being a nun,' which is what I wanted. "There was a long pause and she then said: 'I don't think you could be a nun if you didn't have that part of you. The part of you that longs for love and longs to have children is part of you that will make a good nun as well'."

The second Oxford nun featured in the controversial book Sister Margaret Anne belongs to the Anglican order of the All Saints' Sisters of the Poor, St Mary's Road, Oxford.

She admits to having had 'a terrible passion' for a married lecturer when a student at Durham. After a period of unemployment she eventually ended up being treated in a psychiatric hospital.

Now happy as a nun, she went on to help form the Oxford hospice for children, Helen House.

She said: "People think it's awful not to have a partner but for me the hardest bit of chastity is not so much foregoing sexual relations but the emotional chastity - what goes on in your heart. "Your sexual energy is still there, rumbling around. You can't deny it. But it is somehow transformed into our love for God," said Sister Margaret Anne, 41.

"It's a denial of physical involvement, yes, but it's not a denial of the energy that is behind that. I've not had sexual partners. So you could say that I don't know what I'm missing."

New Habits: Today's Women Who Choose to Become Nuns by Isabel Losada. (Hodder & Stoughton £7.99).

Story date: Saturday 23 January

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