Queer Beyond London: Lgbtq Stories from Four English Cities

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Description

Featuring a foreword from Andrew McMillan

An alternative celebration of LGBTQ history in Britain, offering tales of queer life from four cities.

When it comes to queer British history, London has stolen the limelight. But what about the millions of queer lives lived elsewhere

In Queer beyond London, two leading LGBTQ historians take you on a journey through four English cites from the sixties to the noughties, exploring the northern post-industrial heartlands and taking in the salty air of the seaside cities of the south. Covering the bohemian, artsy world of Brighton, the semi-hidden queer life of military Plymouth, the lesbian activism of Leeds and the cutting-edge dance and drag scenes of Manchester, they show how local people, places and politics shaped LGBTQ life in each city, forging vibrant and distinctive queer cultures of their own.

Using pioneering community histories from each place, and including the voices of queer people who have made their lives there, the book tells the local stories at the heart of our national history.

Reviews

A rich celebration of the everyday LGBTQ stories that have been shaped by - and have helped to shape - modern English urban life. Insightful, inspiring and completely fascinating.
Sarah Waters, author of Tipping the Velvet and The Paying Guests

Being queer is all about change: longing for it, fighting for it - and surviving it. This brilliantly detailed tour of the last fifty years of LGBTQ+ culture and lives in four great English cities digs down through the layers of history and geography and gets to the real nuts and bolts of our experiences. A real labour of love - and quite an achievement.
Neil Bartlett, author of Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall and Address Book

This is a book I didnt know we needed quite so badly! It provides a riveting account of LGBTQ+ people forging new lives, creating new communities and navigating prejudice and discrimination. It is beautifully written and a splendid example of how oral history enriches previously untold stories.
Dr Clare Summerskill, academic, writer and comedian

This book took me back to my teenage years in Brighton, Manchester, Leeds, Bristol and beyond where I sought out the bars where I could belong even though elsewhere we were illegal. A world of laughter, despair, love, openness, belonging and making whoopee.
Michael Cashman, actor, founder member of Stonewall and member of the House of Lords

History should never tell just one story, and this timely book challenges the reader to think beyond a single, London-centric timeline of queer history in England since the 1960s. A "must-read" for cultural historians, queer or not.
Jane Traies, author of The Lives of Older Lesbians and Now You See Me: Lesbian Life Stories

This book tells a fascinating and compelling story. It takes us to places we know and love and to some we didnt know so much about. It tells local stories, personal stories, human stories. It completes the nations queer jigsaw. Its a must-read.
Chris Smith, Britains first openly gay MP, former cabinet minister and member of the House of Lords

'This is a rich and thought-provoking study which provides a more nuanced and more representative history... The methodology, rigorous research and attention to hitherto overlooked stories, people and places that underpin this book makes it an important contribution to the field and one that should stimulate exciting further research into Britains queer past beyond London.'
Claire Martin, Northern History

Author Bio

Professor Matt Cook is a historian based at Birkbeck, University of London. He works mainly on LGBTQ history and his books include London and the Culture of Homosexuality and Queer Domesticities.

Alison Oram is Professor Emerita at Leeds Beckett University where she was based before joining the University of London's Institute of Historical Research as a Senior Research Fellow. She wrote Her Husband was a Woman! and co-edited the landmark Lesbian History Sourcebook.

Together, Alison and Matt wrote the National Trust's first LGBTQ guide book, Prejudice and Pride.