On Queer Street: Social History of British Homosexuality, 1895-1995

Long before Oscar Wilde ‘corrupted and debauched the morals’ of his young lovers, homosexual men were finding their own place in society. Later, as homoerotic ‘ladlove’ was celebrated in fiction and poetry by AE Housman, E M Forster and others, gay writers and artists hid their sexuality behind a glittering and thinly veiled social image. Yet the unspoken tolerance of homosexuality that continued and strengthened during the World Wars turned to persecution in post-war Britain, and gay men once again found themselves living with a dangerous secret that would take decades to find acceptance.

Hugh David traces the homosexual experience from its struggle with Victorian morality through the decriminalization of homosexual acts in 1967 to the end-of-the-century ravages of HIV and AIDS. Frank and often funny, he weaves accounts from ‘ordinary’ gay men with those of the famously queer to produce a vivid social history of homosexual life.