There is provided an in vitro method of detecting human papillomavirus nucleic acid in a sample, comprising: (a) contacting said sample with forward and reverse oligonucleotide primers, wherein said primers bind to target sites in the human papillomavirus L1 gene, or the complement thereof, under conditions suitable to promote amplification of a portion of said human papillomavirus L1 gene or complement, thereby generating an amplicon; (b) contacting said amplicon with a probe, wherein the probe binds to a target site within said amplicon; and (c) detecting binding of said probe to said amplicon; wherein said forward primer binds to a target site having the sequence SEQ ID NO: 1; and wherein said reverse primer binds to a target site having the sequence SEQ ID NO: 2.