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Walking after Midnight: Gay Men's Life Stories
First published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
240 pages, Paperback
First published November 17, 1989
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 11, 2020
As a contributor I'm biased! However it is a wonderful 1989 snap-shot of the lives of 14 gay men from a wide range of backgrounds and ages and how they lived their lives. Our contribution was the penultimate chapter about the life of our late beloved friend and comrade Mark Ashton (1960-1987). Highly recommended!
February 20, 2025
I loved this - fourteen life stories of different gay men in London collected during the mid- and late 80s. Thirteen of them are first-person narratives edited down from interviews (some of which retain the interview questions as prompts, some of which edit these out) and one is a recollection of Mark Ashton from LGSM by his friends and fellow activists. This one is especially moving as it includes recollections from a straight man he met through Red Wedge and ended up sharing a flat with, who talks about being unable to throw out his clothes, and the protest work he carries out against Section 28 in Mark's memory.
Speaking of Section 28, this book does a marvellous job of writing about history from the inside. It begins with the live of Frank Oliver, born in 1907, then Dudley Cave, born in 1921, and two men born in the late 1920s; you see the wars from their perspectives, what working-class life and employment was like, and how cruising and hookups worked in the years before 1967. As we move into the middle of the book we see a few who were involved in the Gay Liberation Front, the importance of consciousness-raising groups and how discussions about sexuality changed the fabric of their lives and how they chose to live; discussions about the GLC and housing; slowly, in the last third, AIDS and Section 28 creep in. The famed raid on Gay's the Word appears in a chapter from Glenn McKee, who was on the board at the time, including the raid on his own home and the tactics the police carried out, psychological as well as physical (McKee is disabled and cannot stand for long periods of time; the police kept shuffling papers to imply they were done speaking to him, then beginning again, to exhaust him and make him 'break'). The last interviewee talks about the work he's done in schools, and how Section 28 will affect it: "I constantly have to stress, in committee reports, that I'm trying to redress the imbalance and discrimination faced by lesbians and gays, not 'promoting' homosexuality. The word 'promotion' has become really contentious." Fascinating to see, 40 years on, the truth of it stated so easily, and to see how a particular word can be made charged and used against itself, as the right have done so much with, e.g. the word "woke", recently.
There's a beautiful variety, too, in how the men talk about their families - it's still something of a cliché to say that gay men have some kind of difficulty with their fathers, and cling to their mothers, and so on (it's actually the bedrock of 'Out of the Shadows', Walt Odets' recently book of gay male psychology). But this collection complicates that, giving us gay men with good relationships with their fathers, and even one whose father had books by Havelock Ellis and Carpenter on the shelf at home, and seemed utterly without homophobia. It's fascinating, too, to see how the older contributors think about the butch/femme dynamic, and talk about 'queens' and how if you were a young 'queen' you didn't go with a similar 'type', and to see that melt away over the next generations (though it does recur in a couple of contributors where they talk about other countries their families have migrated to the UK from, the idea of the 'female' or passive partner being a shameful role and the active partner being somehow 'less gay'.)
The Hall Carpenter Archives closed in 1989 after losing its London Boroughs Grant Funding in 1987 - I'd have loved to visit and read more, or see the original transcripts (in the introduction, Margot Farnham mentions interviewing more than 60 people, and editing down these contributions from interviews some of which ran to 200 pages). There's a sibling volume, 'Inventing Ourselves - Lesbian Life Stories', which I will have to make do with instead.
Speaking of Section 28, this book does a marvellous job of writing about history from the inside. It begins with the live of Frank Oliver, born in 1907, then Dudley Cave, born in 1921, and two men born in the late 1920s; you see the wars from their perspectives, what working-class life and employment was like, and how cruising and hookups worked in the years before 1967. As we move into the middle of the book we see a few who were involved in the Gay Liberation Front, the importance of consciousness-raising groups and how discussions about sexuality changed the fabric of their lives and how they chose to live; discussions about the GLC and housing; slowly, in the last third, AIDS and Section 28 creep in. The famed raid on Gay's the Word appears in a chapter from Glenn McKee, who was on the board at the time, including the raid on his own home and the tactics the police carried out, psychological as well as physical (McKee is disabled and cannot stand for long periods of time; the police kept shuffling papers to imply they were done speaking to him, then beginning again, to exhaust him and make him 'break'). The last interviewee talks about the work he's done in schools, and how Section 28 will affect it: "I constantly have to stress, in committee reports, that I'm trying to redress the imbalance and discrimination faced by lesbians and gays, not 'promoting' homosexuality. The word 'promotion' has become really contentious." Fascinating to see, 40 years on, the truth of it stated so easily, and to see how a particular word can be made charged and used against itself, as the right have done so much with, e.g. the word "woke", recently.
There's a beautiful variety, too, in how the men talk about their families - it's still something of a cliché to say that gay men have some kind of difficulty with their fathers, and cling to their mothers, and so on (it's actually the bedrock of 'Out of the Shadows', Walt Odets' recently book of gay male psychology). But this collection complicates that, giving us gay men with good relationships with their fathers, and even one whose father had books by Havelock Ellis and Carpenter on the shelf at home, and seemed utterly without homophobia. It's fascinating, too, to see how the older contributors think about the butch/femme dynamic, and talk about 'queens' and how if you were a young 'queen' you didn't go with a similar 'type', and to see that melt away over the next generations (though it does recur in a couple of contributors where they talk about other countries their families have migrated to the UK from, the idea of the 'female' or passive partner being a shameful role and the active partner being somehow 'less gay'.)
The Hall Carpenter Archives closed in 1989 after losing its London Boroughs Grant Funding in 1987 - I'd have loved to visit and read more, or see the original transcripts (in the introduction, Margot Farnham mentions interviewing more than 60 people, and editing down these contributions from interviews some of which ran to 200 pages). There's a sibling volume, 'Inventing Ourselves - Lesbian Life Stories', which I will have to make do with instead.
January 4, 2025
This is a collection of individual interviews with 13 gay men, as well as an interview with five friends of Mark Ashton's shortly after his passing. I got the book to read the chapter on Mark Ashton, but the entire book was an incredible read.
I appreciate the inclusion of non-white gay men as well as one with a disability. They were given the opportunity to talk about the extra hurdles they experienced outside but also very much within our community, which are still prevalent today.
I read this in tandem with Simon Garfield's The End of Innocence: Britain in the Time of AIDS.
I appreciate the inclusion of non-white gay men as well as one with a disability. They were given the opportunity to talk about the extra hurdles they experienced outside but also very much within our community, which are still prevalent today.
I read this in tandem with Simon Garfield's The End of Innocence: Britain in the Time of AIDS.
August 31, 2025
On the last chapter but looking to finish tomorrow. Found this in a local shop in Reading and so very glad I found it! A stunning slice of life from 14 gay and queer men - including stories from those who are Black, Asian, disabled, and others.
February 26, 2025
read this for my dissertation, and really loved it!
July 23, 2010
absolutely fascinating and incitive book about a time and a history I knew nothing about. Loved it. highley recommended to anyone interested in oral history, or the history of any political moment.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews