Queer City - Gay London from the Romans to the present day (Broché)

In Queer City Peter Ackroyd looks at London in a whole new way - through the story of its gay population. Ackroyd takes us right into the hidden history of the city and its endless loop of permissiveness and censure, from the pleasure-seeking Romans to the frenzy of executions for sodomy in the early nineteenth century. The Second World War turned the roles of the sexes upside down, and the seventies brought Gay Liberation and disco music, but then the horror of Aids arrived and the wheel of queer fortune turned yet again.
Today we live in an era of increasing openness and tolerance and queer London has become part of the new norm. Ackroyd tells the story of how it got there, celebrating its diversity, thrills and energy on the one hand, but reminding us of its very real terrors, dangers and risks on the other.