Book Review: Some Men in London

Mitchell Alcrim reviews
Some Men in London: Queer Life, 1945-1959,
ed. Peter Parker (Penguin Books, 2024)

In this elegant and fascinating anthology, Some Men in London: Queer Life, 1945-1959, Peter Parker weaves a vibrant tapestry of queer men’s lives in the years following the end of the Second World War when homosexuality between men remained illegal. (A second volume will cover the years 1960-1967.) Drawing from an astonishing array of sources, including ‘letters and diaries, medical and sociological books and magazines, newspaper reports and letters pages, fiction and autobiography, film and theatre, television and radio programmes, parliamentary debates and government and police documents,’ (5) Parker immerses the reader in the rich, varied lives of homosexual men living in London during this period.

In the final years of the Second World War and in the years immediately following, a perceived rise in ‘vice’, most notably in homosexual offences and female prostitution, led to the formation of a government committee to consider these social problems and how to deal with them. Chaired by the educationalist Sir John Wolfenden, the Wolfenden Committee was formed in 1954 (1); in 1957, after three years of ‘fact-gathering, consultation and deliberation, the Wolfenden Report on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution was published.’ Its recommendation to the government was that ‘homosexual behaviour between consenting adults in private be no longer a criminal offence in England and Wales, [but it] would take another decade for the recommendations to be implemented into law.’ (284)

To create ‘a mosaic of experience and opinion’ and ‘to avoid the pitfalls of hindsight’, Parker includes solely ‘what was written or recorded at the time’. (5) This approach permits the reader to experience ‘the reality of where and how queer men really lived during this period and how they spent their time – in pubs and clubs, in more public places of assignation, or simply at home.’ (6)

Additionally, Parker does not shy away from including ‘the voices of hostile witnesses [which take] their place alongside those of people whose activities, or very existence, these witnesses deplored or even wished to eradicate.’ (5) These passages often make for unsettling reading but provide the reader with a wide-ranging picture of what queer life was like at the time. As Parker writes, ‘we need to be reminded what people really thought, felt and said in the past – if only to ensure we never return there.’ (17)

The book is divided by year and begins with two contrasting entries both describing celebratory activities occurring on VE Day, 8 May 1945. The first, taken from the diary of the pioneering physique photographer, John Barrington, relates a late-night encounter with an anonymous sailor: ‘Big, tall, very masculine.’ Soon, Barrington has ‘[e]stablished that he [the sailor] never had. Couldn’t.’ Barrington accepts the challenge and convinces the young man to accompany him to his office where after a ‘little more persuasion’, a ‘jaw-aching, tongue-tiring hour resulted in ‘[the sailor’s] sheepish, grudging admission that everything is possible given the right time, place, incentive and partner.’ (22)

How very different from the way in which the Conservative MP, Henry ‘Chips’ Channon spends VE Day with his lover, the playwright Terence Rattigan. ‘[W]e dined à deux in the black dining room as we listened to the King’s broadcast’; this is followed by an elegant party at Channon’s Belgrave Square home attended by theatre luminaries. The guests disperse at around 4 a.m. at which time he and Terry retire for the night. Channon notes happily, ‘We slept together in Napoleon’s bed! He snored a little, moaned and smiled as he turned over. Here endeth the first twenty-fours of peace.’ (24)

These two passages are indicative of the variety of tone found in the anthology.  One of the most potent qualities of the collection is the sheer breadth of experiences and opinions expressed in it. Some of these men led rowdy, ribald existences, while many others yearned for a quiet domesticity shared with a lifelong partner.

This longing for affection finds expression throughout the book and makes for moving reading. George Lucas, a civil servant who kept detailed diaries from 1948 until 2009 (407) writes on 19 February 1948, that ‘[u]nquestionably, my great desideratum has always been sympathy and affection. Not friendship, or even passion, so much as affection.’ (65) Lucas enjoyed various relationships with guardsmen and expresses his feelings here in quasi-ecstatic terms:

I have succeeded in forming an acquaintanceship with a young Grenadier Guardsman. His charm is undeniable; and I am not wholly despondent of bringing about some amorous relationship between us. Meanwhile my emotions have run their usual course, from interest to fondness, and thence to a heady exaltation, in which glowing images, splendid scraps of great love poems, delicate and lovely dreams, mingle with visions of him, and fond imaginings of my head at rest on his shoulder, and my heart at rest on his. (82)

James Courage

In the New Zealand-born author James Courage’s 1959 novel A Way Of Love, Victor, a friend of the protagonist, expresses that a ‘little sweetness of disposition and an acquaintance with the arts of love are the most I can expect in my cup of tea, these days’ and goes on to say that ‘[w]e traipse round in our own camp little circles madly longing for the one great love of our lives – and never finding it.’ (354) Victor despairs of ever having a meaningful, long-lasting relationship at a time when they were not accepted and were, in fact, against the law. Sadly, it is a feeling that was likely shared by many queer men at the time.

And yet, in his 1952 book, Society and the Homosexual, the sociologist Michael Schofield, writing under the pseudonym Gordon Westwood, includes a case study of a happy queer couple who are seldom apart. What he finds particularly striking is ‘their complete emotional harmony and the way they rejoice in each other’s company.’ (151-2) As Parker notes, Schofield’s work ‘provide[s] a detailed record of how homosexual men saw themselves, including those queer couples leading lives of contented domesticity who did not therefore conform to the popular notion of the promiscuous, effeminate and predatory queer’. (151)

Many professional writers, often arrested and imprisoned for homosexual offences themselves, appear in the pages of the anthology. ‘One unintended consequence of jailing writers such as Peter Wildeblood or Rupert Croft-Cooke was that they subsequently published accounts of their trials and imprisonment critical of the police, the judiciary and the prison authorities.’ (232)

Wildeblood had been convicted in 1954 alongside Lord Montagu and Michael Pitt-Rivers. Only Wildeblood admitted to being homosexual during the trial – he served 12 months in Wormwood Scrubs and subsequently wrote a memoir, Against the Law, in which ‘he also discussed both homosexuality and police methods in general’. Interestingly, the book was sent to all MPs when Parliament began debates on the Wolfenden Report. (225) The book opens with a powerful statement of intent:

Sometimes, when a man is dying, he directs that his body shall be given to the doctors, so that the causes of his suffering and death may be investigated, and the knowledge used to help others. I cannot give my body yet; only my heart and my mind, trusting that by this gift I can give some hope and courage to other men like myself, and to the rest of the world some understanding. (225-6)

Wildeblood goes on to vividly describe an incident of police entrapment of an elderly gentleman by a young officer.

The old man had fallen into the trap, and he would now be prosecuted and perhaps imprisoned. The young policeman, having behaved like a male prostitute, would probably be commended for his night’s work. And, tomorrow night, he would be back there again. (228)

At several points in the anthology, there is a marked conflation of homosexuality and male prostitution. Parker remarks in his introduction that: ‘It says a good deal about attitudes to homosexuality that the law made no real distinction between men who were merely in search of sexual companionship and male prostitutes who were touting for business.’ (7) In his three-part exposé on homosexuality printed in the Sunday Pictorial newspaper on 1 June 1952, Douglas Warth stated that: ‘One of the most unpleasant aspects of a thoroughly unpleasant subject is the fact that an overwhelming proportion of the homosexual vice … is conducted commercially.’ (136) And, several years later, during the House of Commons debate on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution (Report) on 26 November 1958, F.J. Bellenger, a Labour MP, addressed the House stating his view, based on his reading of Wildeblood’s memoir, that homosexuality ‘is not love and affection. It is nothing, more or less, … than promiscuousness. In other words, to use the word used by Shakespeare, in many cases it is nothing more or less than whoring.’ (342)

Subtle changes in attitudes regarding homosexuality are evident over the course of the anthology, illustrating Parker’s point that ‘the trajectory of this anthology is towards the partial decriminalization of male homosexuality’. (4) Albeit reluctantly and with a slew of caveats attached, the ban on homosexuality on stage was lifted by the Lord Chamberlain’s office in 1958. The statement, issued by the Lord Chamberlain on 31 October 1958 read in part that ‘now that it has become a topic of almost everyday conversation, its exclusion can no longer be defended as a reasonable course’. (323)

In response to a vicious attack on homosexuals in the theatre launched by John Deane Potter in the Daily Express in April 1959 in which Potter characterised these men as ‘evil’, the playwright John Osborne issued a rebuttal, writing among other things that ‘many men prefer the sexual companionship of men to women’ and later that ‘[homosexuality] has always been with us. It is a fact of living’. (364) As we learn from the biographical notes Parker supplies at the end of the book, Osborne had ‘a complex and somewhat obsessive relationship with homosexuality, sometimes defending it, at others decrying it’. (414) One of the more amusing pieces in the book concerns Osborne and the perceptions others had of him. Colin Spencer, the artist, who had been commissioned to draw a portrait of Osborne for a series featuring contemporary writers, described his encounter with the playwright in a letter to his lover John Tasker in March 1959. Osborne appeared wearing ‘black skin-tight trousers that showed a cute bottom and a huge lunch.’ He ends the letter with the pithy observation that: ‘He has a curiously camp voice and he appears to stare at one with his teeth.’ (361) One can’t help but wonder what sort of reaction this assessment would have prompted from the revolutionary young playwright.

Oscar Wilde is also mentioned in the anthology. Parker writes that, even ‘[h]alf a century after his death, Oscar Wilde continued to cast a long shadow, his name often being evoked in any discussion of homosexuality.’ (87) In 1950, the unexpurgated (though inaccurate, as Parker points out) text of De Profundis was at last published. Marie Stopes, a friend of Lord Alfred Douglas, taking exception to Herbert Read’s description of Bosie Douglas as ‘the most complete cad in history’ in his review, castigated Wilde in a letter to The Listener (dated 5 January 1950) for his ‘abnormal and filthy practices which he had been indulging in with stable boys’. (87) The artist John Minton, at the risk to his own career and reputation, wrote a letter in response in which he not only took Stopes to task for her ‘bigoted moral fervour’ but also made an impassioned plea for change. 

In this country where the same vicious law which imprisoned Wilde still operates one looks to those with pretensions to a scientific approach not to be victims of prejudice and intolerance but to give a lead for at least a saner and more comprehensive attitude towards the homosexual in society. (89-90)

Throughout the book, Parker offers valuable contextual information which gives us a deeper understanding of the historical moment. The information never overwhelms, nor does it ever provide facile or leading interpretations. Sometimes humorous or ironic, the insertions are a delight to read as well.

This book is vast in scope. Many tragedies involving suicide, imprisonment and blackmail are related here. But far exceeding these in number are stories of queer men in London forging a way ahead, creating happy and productive lives for themselves and their loved ones, all while living outside the law. As Parker so eloquently relates in his introduction to this masterful work, ‘Amid the darkness of the period, there are flashes of light, humour, defiance and common sense …’ (17)

I thank Peter Parker for his exemplary work on this anthology and cannot wait to delve into Volume 2.

Some Men in London can be bought from Bookshop.org, supporting local bookshops.

Mitchell Alcrim, Cambridge, Mass.