An antique manuscript dealer accused of raping an 11-year-old girl confessed to finding children attractive in his unpublished novel, a court has heard.

Xavier Driffield, 65, wrote a story about touching a character with the same name as his victim a few years after allegedly sexually abusing her when he lived in Camden.

In the manuscript, which he sent to her family in the mid 1990s, he complains that there is nothing wrong with having sex with underage girls as long as they are not “forced to do anything they don’t want to do”.

Driffield added: “I certainly have found a number of young girls attractive, that doesn’t mean I am hanging around dark alleyways.”

Extracts of the book, which Driffield denies is based on real events, were read to a jury at Snaresbrook Crown Court on Monday.

In one part his character says to the girl: “I think the best thing is if I come to your room early in the morning before I go off to Portobello, it’s the only time you’re not guarded.”

He described watching the girl sleeping, writing: “I put my hand under the covers and began to stroke her skin, it had the wonderful warm feeling that female flesh always seems to have.”

The narrator also complains that her chest was still very small.

He adds: “I had a desire to play with her developing breasts – I longed to take pictures of them as they grew.”

Driffield is said to have molested the girl, who cannot be named, repeatedly between 1989 and 1992, when she was aged between 11 and 13. Jurors heard the abuse stopped just before the alleged victim’s 14th birthday because Driffield moved away from Camden.

In the mid 1990s her family went to a solicitor after receiving the manuscript to prevent it from being published.

The alleged victim, now 36, told the court she did not feel ready to go to the police until she had a child of her own.

Driffield claims she made up the sexual abuse after reading Judy Blume’s novels as a child.

Ms Blume, author of books such as Are You There God? It’s Me, Margret, Tiger Eyes and Superfudge, has looked at children’s understanding of sex in her work, the court heard.

Driffield, of Charleville Road, West Kensington, denies five counts of indecent assault, one count of indecency with a child and two counts of rape.

The trial continues.