Some Men In London: Queer Life, 1945-1959

Quite simply, this book is a work of genius – Matthew Parris * The Spectator *A monumental achievement… an irresistibly immersive history…. no brief description can capture the richness and variety of this fabulous project… Brilliantly compiled and wryly edited, it’s often a darkly funny book, infused with all the joy, tragedy, strangeness and frailty of human life. I loved it. – Dominic Sandbrook * The Times *These beautifully written letters, diary entries and extracts from novels, skilfully edited by Peter Parker, add up to an essential study of postwar gay London life… Some Men in London’s second volume, which takes us up to 1967, will be published in September. I’ll be counting the days - this is one of the best anthologies I have ever read – John Self * The Observer *This is an anthology with an immense amount to tell us about its period, scrupulously sieved, and just as much about our lives now… Peter Parker has assembled a fascinating amount of written material about the existence of homosexual men from 1945 until 1967… A wonderful range of extracts from outrageous pulp fiction makes this substantial anthology unmissable – Philip Hensher * The Spectator *Some Men in London animates mid-century gay life with panoramic, surround-sound effect, while its collage-like form makes for easily digestible reading. If you think you already know this period, think again…. a magnificent history of postwar gay life and moral panic… The rich cultural, political and social montage that emerges is the combined result of Parker’s comprehensive grasp of the period and a process of meticulous curation – Lucy Scholes * The FT *Some Men in London has the democratic, unpolemical quality of a social realist novel. In its sheer range of viewpoints and incidents it shares something with the roving perspective and multitudinous voices of Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor (1851). It is a testament to Peter Parker’s skill as a compiler – his ear for the peculiar and the archetypal alike – that gay life in these years, far from being a niche or rarefied thing, comes to feel like its own epicentre, the beating heart of the city. At times it feels more urgent and vibrant by far than life in the present – James Cahill * The TLS *I’d heartily recommend Peter Parker’s Some Men of London compendium of writings about homosexuality between the end of World War II and legalisation beginning in 1967… It makes for riveting, startling, often horrifyingly comprehensive reading – Paul Flynn * Evening Standard *With it’s wide-ranging selection, generous biographical notes and provocative bibliography, Some Men in London is a serious and important contribution to our understanding of Britain up to today – Fiona Sampson * The Tablet *An intriguing collage of the era’s mood – Robbie Millen * The Times *As lively as a novel… a truly vital thing in a world where so many stories have been erased or criminalised * Damien Barr *

Peter Parker is the author of biographies of J. R. Ackerley and Christopher Isherwood, The Old Lie, The Last Veteran, Housman Country and A Little Book of Latin for Gardeners. He edited A Reader’s Guide to the Twentieth-Century Novel and Twentieth-Century Writers, is an advisory editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and contributed essays to Britten’s Century and Fifty Gay and Lesbian Books Everybody Must Read. He has written about people, books, art, architecture and gardening for a wide variety of newspapers and magazines, and lives in London’s East End.