I can't select faces with left mouse button I tried following a tutorial to make something simple and ran in to a problem straight away.

From the default cube: I can select it in Object Mode (object turns orange). I switch to Edit Mode, I can only select a face with right click and not left. When I left click, no list of options appears as I expected there to be.

So I can't move on from there.

Can anyone help?

Thanks in advance.
This is characteristic to blender. With the left mouse button you change the position for the 3d cursor and with the right mouse button you can select objects.

In edit mode you can use the W shortcut, which give you a list of modelling actions. You can also use the left bar or the options in the menubar below.




Take a look at this tutorial about navigating in Blender:
http://www.katsbits.com/tutorials/blender/learning-keyboard-mouse-navigation.php