Farley Granger's autobiography Include Me Out. Lonesome In 1945, Liana was a hooker in Hawaii. She was well educated, spoke perfect English, and rather than a sleazy bordello, her place of work was as close to a brothel officially sanctioned by the United States military as there would ever be. It was more like a country club, and the girls worked under the medical supervision of a US Navy doctor. Although those who worked there were earning a living, they also considered ser

I must confess that to me, the Pride flag is a horrible looking thing, but I have bought one anyway to display on the weekend of the London march. Its meaning transcends any aesthetic objections I may have. Also, seeing as it's Pride month, I’ve chosen to share the story of how in 1982, I went to read in the park and left it changed forever, having failed to absorb a single paragraph. Me in a 1980 photobooth snap. In the spring of 1981, without consulting anyone, I dropped ou

Old snaps in a St Bruno tin. Apart from the the odd school shots of their children, my parents did not have photographs of relatives dotted all over the place. My mother would doubtless have considered them clutter that she'd have had to dust around. Throughout my childhood, there was a large, framed, baby photograph of my naked father hanging on the kitchen wall, but with hindsight it was very out of character. I’ve come to assume that it must have amused my mother to have i

The booklet welcoming new staff. As a porter/linesman for Butlin's Staff Accommodation I'd had to clear up pigswill and donkey debris, but worse was to come. Phantoms and Flatulence The bathroom block cleaners and I were terrorised by a villain who became known to all as ‘The Phantom Crapper’. At first the culprit would poo into a polystyrene chip carton, stick a wooden fork into it at a jaunty angle and leave it on the chalet line like a piece of art - which he may well ha

A collection of Butlin's Pwllheli badges, all from before my time. Butlinland One gloomy November day in 1982, I found myself in a most unusual situation. In the East Annex of the Pwllheli Butlin's camp, I was balancing precariously on the roof of a trailer normally hauled around the site by a tractor. A manager in a suit was laboriously pulling it along the deserted chalet lines with me on top of it, clutching an eighteen-foot pole and looking for all the world like the Grea

'Nothing of the Sort' On Wednesday, October 24th 1934 at the Old Bailey, Carmen Fernandez stood in front of the dock, where she was to...

In November 1984, within a month of moving to London, I attended a music and film show at the Barbican Hall, marking seventy years of the...

1930's issues of Health and Strength magazine. Physical Culture In Until the Real Thing Comes Along, Malcolm Trevelyan, a young man struggling with his sexuality, found it hard to get advice regarding his predicament. Malcolm's predicament. But, there was at least one publication which a young man struggling with his sexuality might have turned to. Health and Strength, a magazine established in 1898, was ‘the official organ of the Health and Strength League’ and it was mainst

Some of the many books I bought from Gay's The Word over the years. Growing up in a Saucy Postcard World The occasional sex scenes in my...

My second novel When Summer is Gone is published tomorrow, being the second part of The Likes of Us series covering the experiences of...