Public nudity is not a mass popular cause. In The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell scornfully identified among those drawn to socialism “every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist and feminist in England”.

Sexual equality is now a mainstream cause and a great social advance. But nakedness is not. Hence anguished considerations by Waveney District Council about how and where to designate a stretch of Suffolk coastline as a naturist beach. According to a spokesman for British Naturism, it is the first time that a municipal government has taken such a lead.

The problem, however, is that naturism is not a purely private matter: it is, by definition, the public display of nakedness. That is the point of it. British Naturism complains of prejudice, and urges a fight for naturists’ rights. It thereby entirely misunderstands the objection. The issue in East Anglia is how to accommodate naturists’ preferences without requiring other beachgoers to see them. If there is no suitably secluded coastline, then there is no case for naturism.

The human body unadorned is only rarely a thing of beauty, and in few cases does its loveliness increase. A wish to avoid the unexpected sight of it is not prejudice but aesthetic sense. Moreover, the British climate, even in summer, is notoriously unkind to the underdressed.

For those reasons, perhaps, naturism has never escaped the stigma of the snigger. But there is a serious point of principle in public tolerance of unconventional ways of living. A naturist beach is not an invitation to hedonism, but a pedestrian accommodation of personal choice.