Some Men in London

Reading List

When assembling material for my two-volume anthology Some Men in London, which describes queer life in the capital between 1945 and 1967, I drew upon a large number of books, as well as unpublished letters, diaries and other documents. Here are my suggestions for books that I either found essential or so intriguing or enjoyable that I want to recommend them to other readers. I have included both fiction and non-fiction, and while some of these books will be familiar, others were certainly new to me, and I was very pleased to have come across them during my researches. Like my book, they provide a wide variety of viewpoints, some of which now seem reprehensible and offensive. They are, however, all part of our history, a history that we should remember and learn from.

- Peter Parker

Some Men in London Volume 1 and Volume 2

Peter Wildeblood, Against the Law (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1955; 2019)

Wildeblood has been criticised as too socially conservative by later generations of gay historians, but this autobiography of one of the men who challenged the law that criminalised homosexual acts is still powerful. In particular it exposes corrupt and illegal police methods when dealing with homosexual ‘crimes’– tampering with evidence, searching houses without warrants, refusing access to a solicitor. It also provides a highly critical account of what it was actually like to be in prison, a fate that many queer men of the period suffered.

Report of the Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution (HMSO, 1957)

Otherwise known as the Wolfenden Report, this was a surprise best-seller when it was first published, even though Parliament failed to act on its recommendations for a whole decade. Not exactly a gripping read, it is nevertheless stuffed with fascinating statistics, and presents the detailed findings over four years that led the committee to conclude that homosexuality should be partially decriminalised.

Gordon Westwood, A Minority (Longmans, 1960)

Commissioned by the British Social Biology Council, this study was hailed as ‘the most extensive research on the subject of male homosexuality yet to be published’. It was written under a pseudonym by the queer sociologist Michael Schofield. He interviewed over 100 gay men, and their frank and detailed testimonies provide a picture of what they really thought about their sexuality, in stark contrast to how their lives were portrayed in parliament and the tabloids. Here are voices that at the time were rarely heard.

Douglas Plummer, Queer People: The Truth About Homosexuals in Britain (W.H. Allen, 1963)

The pseudonymous author comes out fighting in this invigorating and hugely readable book, the first chapter of which is titled ‘I Am Not Ashamed’. Plummer was attacked in the press for outing a number of well-known but dead people, possibly because he also accused the newspapers of printing sensational and misleading stories about homosexual life. The book is splendidly defiant, suggesting among other things that queer men should stop being so tolerant of those who disapproved of them.

Harold Martin, Men and Cupid (Fortune Press, 1965)

One of the most level-headed and sensible books on homosexuality from this period. The nonagenarian and heterosexual Martin, who was not a professional psychiatrist and rightly has little time for those who were, provides an invaluable and enjoyably debunking survey of the kind of books they wrote. Unusually for the period, he regarded homosexuality not as a psychological or hormonal disorder but ‘the chance burgeoning of a bloom which has its stem and roots in normal organic life throughout the animal world’, and his book is a wide-ranging and well-argued corrective to prevailing views.

Joe Orton, The Orton Diaries (Methuen, 1986)

Covering only the last six months of the playwright’s life, from mid-December 1966 to the beginning of August 1967, these diaries have achieved notoriety for their highly detailed accounts of his sexual exploits. Orton’s chief virtue as a diarist was that, unlike many queer men at this period, he was completely without fear or shame, and simply didn’t give a damn what anyone thought about his sexuality. They also provide a scarifying account of his fraught and eventually fatal domestic relationship with Kenneth Halliwell.

Mary Renault, The Charioteer (Longmans, Green, 1953; Virago, 2013)

Not included in my book because it doesn’t take place in London, this is nevertheless my favourite gay novel of the period. Renault would go on to describe homosexuality in the Ancient World, but here took the bold decision to set the action in 1940 and make her principal characters wounded servicemen. Laurie has to decide between the platonic ideal offered by a conscientious objector and a more realistic sexual love offered by a fellow Dunkirk veteran, and this dilemma maintains narrative tension until the very end of the story. Emotionally intelligent, beautifully written and deeply moving.

D.J. West, Homosexuality (Duckworth, 1955)

Perhaps the most famous and influential book on the subject to be published during this period, though it makes dispiriting reading. West’s aim was ‘to bring the problems of homosexuality out into the open, and to discuss them calmly and without bias’. Although West was himself gay, he concluded: ‘Given a simple choice, no one in his right mind would chose to be homosexual.’ I bought this book as a teenager and was both frightened and depressed by it, but it is a landmark study that became a best-seller when it was published in a revised edition by Penguin in 1960.

Homosexuality and Prostitution: a memorandum of evidence (British Medical Association, 1955)

If you want to learn just how ignorant and out of touch the psychiatric and medical professions were in the 1950s, then this brief official report submitted to the Wolfenden Committee provides the evidence. It is full of astounding and largely unsubstantiated assertions of the sort that, though familiar from tabloid newspapers, are truly shocking to find in the official submission of a professional body to a parliamentary committee.

Some Men in London

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