What women fantasise about – according to Gillian Anderson’s unflinching new book

From doing it with Harry Potter characters to craving good old fashioned tenderness, it’s all there in this new collection of fantasies

What do women really want in bed? It’s the million-dollar question, and one answered many times over in Gillian Anderson’s unflinching new collection of female sexual fantasies – Want.

Released today (5 September), the book collates 174 fantasies from anonymous women around the world. The letters were whittled down from 1800 entries, and organised into 13 chapters with titles from “To Be Worshipped” to “The Watchers and the Watched”.

Anderson’s own fantasy is hidden with the pages. Despite the actor being known for her frank relationship with the birds and the bees – from her role as a sex therapist in Sex Education to her drinks brand G Spot – she says she felt awkward about putting it into words.

“Suddenly, describing the imagery that’s been in my head for a while, and the action of doing that, added a level of intimacy that I wouldn’t have expected,” Anderson told BBC News. “I wouldn’t have expected myself to be so shy around it.”

There are a truly eclectic range of fantasies in the book. Women dream about “very hot” sex with Harry Styles or having a three-way with the Weasley twins from Harry Potter. Another writes about her fantasy of doing it on an altar in a church, while one sings the praises of “sweet and nasty” period sex. Sex with strangers is another common theme, as is women being turned on by the concept of voyeurism.

Want includes fantasies about lesbian pirate ships (You don’t argue with them, otherwise you are stripped naked and whipped”), medical students inspecting vaginas, and having an affair with someone at work.

Then there are the more moving entries – a bereaved woman who misses being touched, and another who is secretly in love with her best friend. One woman simply wishes her husband would tell her she’s beautiful.

One knotty chapter, “The Captive”, delves into fantasies about intense domination, submission and violence. They are not intended to be acted upon, they are purely fantasies, but Anderson said it would have “felt disingenuous” not to include them because they exist.

Gillian Anderson in May 2024 (Getty Images)

A key aim of the book is to give narrative control back to women, in a society where porn so often favours the male gaze and desires.

The collection is a modern take on a groundbreaking book of women’s fantasies, My Secret Garden, published by Nancy Friday in 1973.

Want is available in bookshops now.