What do you think?
Rate this book
Between the Acts: Lives of Homosexual Men 1885-1967
Peoples lives are complex, contradictory and inconsistent. They can also be rich and passionate, at times lonely, at times exciting. This book reflects this in the life stories of 15 homosexual men in the years when homosexual acts were illegal in the UK.
Hardcover
First published November 20, 1990
158 people want to read
About the author
Jeffrey Weeks
27 books7 followersJeffrey Weeks OBE (born 1945) is a gay activist and an historian and sociologist specialising in work on sexuality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey...
Librarian Note:
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey...
Librarian Note:
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 20, 2014
If you are interested in unwritten history i.e... the unrecorded lives of gay men who will appear in no archives, then this would be a fine addition to your bookcase. I have the 2nd edition which contains the oral life history of 15 gay men. Once you realise that the book is the transcription of taped interviews largely from the 70's then a lot of the minor oddities make sense.
Each life is anonymous but is given a title in an effort to categorise them and to give appeal to a wider readership. The chapter headings are titled 'A Rough Life' 'An Academic Life' 'A Londoner's Life' 'A Kept Life' etc.
There is enough choice for every taste I'd imagine although not all the lives are of equal length with some being just 4 pages and some going on for much longer. I suspect this reflects the willingness of the participants to reveal their secrets lives and how articulate some of the interviewees were. A common theme running through the life stories is how ignorant the men were of their homosexuality. There was no word for what they were and no advice to be got from anyone. They had to figure it out themselves.
You'll find that most of them had a very good time of it because society largely left them alone if they played the game. They had an alternative social scene which worked in the times they lived in. Overall quite an enlightening enjoyable read.
Each life is anonymous but is given a title in an effort to categorise them and to give appeal to a wider readership. The chapter headings are titled 'A Rough Life' 'An Academic Life' 'A Londoner's Life' 'A Kept Life' etc.
There is enough choice for every taste I'd imagine although not all the lives are of equal length with some being just 4 pages and some going on for much longer. I suspect this reflects the willingness of the participants to reveal their secrets lives and how articulate some of the interviewees were. A common theme running through the life stories is how ignorant the men were of their homosexuality. There was no word for what they were and no advice to be got from anyone. They had to figure it out themselves.
You'll find that most of them had a very good time of it because society largely left them alone if they played the game. They had an alternative social scene which worked in the times they lived in. Overall quite an enlightening enjoyable read.
February 27, 2024
A window to a different time that I’m glad exists
August 14, 2023
Brilliant book - strongly recommend you read the review by Joseph Oliver from October 20, 2014. He says everything that should and needs to be said far better then I could and rightly sings the praises of this book.
What I particularly like about this examination of homosexual life was that it is composed of transcriptions of interviews conducted in the 1970's with 'gay' Englishmen, or at least men who lived or were living in England - I've not doubt that there were amongst the men those with varying degrees of connections to the UK's Celtic fringes but this is not elucidated - I place quotation marks around 'gay' because it would, for most of those interviewed have been a novel term and, even when one used to described themselves would have a meaning far different to how 'gay' might define themselves. Also the interviews were conducted at a time when although American influence was thought to be all pervasive it was, compared to even the early 21st century, almost nugatory. For most English or European 'gay' men their understanding of American was slight, literature told them as much as film while tv was nowhere near as pervasive as it was in the USA at thee time or would eventually become in the UK (it maybe hard to imagine but in the 1970's the UK only had three tv stations, only one of which a commercial station relying on advertising).
This is important because what people knew about America was limited, and the gay movement there, was limited, it was important, but compared to today countries and cultures in Europe at that time were still remarkably local, regional, provincial and without opening their mouths you could easily a group of German, French or Spanish youngsters by the way the dressed. It is that distinction, the difference from what was to come that makes these interviews so fascinating. Pop culture has smoothed out so many differences and created a narrative where America's post war boom in the 1950's has been imposed on the UK and elsewhere and so many younger people believe that the 1950's in the UK were a 'rock and roll' time of drive in movies and restaurants. In the same way the trajectory of post Stonewall America (or at least New York) has been papered over the history of gay life in London. The truth is London didn't acquire a vibrant and visible gay scene until the 1980's by which time its equivalent in New York was already on the wane (London didn't get it's ersatz 'gay village' in Soho until the 1990's and it lasted barely 20 years).
The voices recorded here are historic and important - I was still a schoolboy in the 1970's when these men's stories were recorded but the sexual ignorance I and others, gay and straight, were being brought up in was still reminiscent of what these men experienced. Clearly it was worse for gays, there was nowhere to go and no one to speak to and ignorance was all pervasive. Even when no longer stridently condemned the most you might find is 'understanding' which barely amounted to an acceptance much more extensive then 'we aren't going to kick shit out of you, automatically'. Tolerance was wafer thin and utterly unsupported by sanction from schools, the laws or the churches. Quite why so many gay men are willing to pour money into supporting, via weddings etc., the very religious institutions that only came round to them when seeking to fill their ever emptying coffers by the abandonment of their straight congregations.
This is a really first rate history and I can't recommend it enough.
What I particularly like about this examination of homosexual life was that it is composed of transcriptions of interviews conducted in the 1970's with 'gay' Englishmen, or at least men who lived or were living in England - I've not doubt that there were amongst the men those with varying degrees of connections to the UK's Celtic fringes but this is not elucidated - I place quotation marks around 'gay' because it would, for most of those interviewed have been a novel term and, even when one used to described themselves would have a meaning far different to how 'gay' might define themselves. Also the interviews were conducted at a time when although American influence was thought to be all pervasive it was, compared to even the early 21st century, almost nugatory. For most English or European 'gay' men their understanding of American was slight, literature told them as much as film while tv was nowhere near as pervasive as it was in the USA at thee time or would eventually become in the UK (it maybe hard to imagine but in the 1970's the UK only had three tv stations, only one of which a commercial station relying on advertising).
This is important because what people knew about America was limited, and the gay movement there, was limited, it was important, but compared to today countries and cultures in Europe at that time were still remarkably local, regional, provincial and without opening their mouths you could easily a group of German, French or Spanish youngsters by the way the dressed. It is that distinction, the difference from what was to come that makes these interviews so fascinating. Pop culture has smoothed out so many differences and created a narrative where America's post war boom in the 1950's has been imposed on the UK and elsewhere and so many younger people believe that the 1950's in the UK were a 'rock and roll' time of drive in movies and restaurants. In the same way the trajectory of post Stonewall America (or at least New York) has been papered over the history of gay life in London. The truth is London didn't acquire a vibrant and visible gay scene until the 1980's by which time its equivalent in New York was already on the wane (London didn't get it's ersatz 'gay village' in Soho until the 1990's and it lasted barely 20 years).
The voices recorded here are historic and important - I was still a schoolboy in the 1970's when these men's stories were recorded but the sexual ignorance I and others, gay and straight, were being brought up in was still reminiscent of what these men experienced. Clearly it was worse for gays, there was nowhere to go and no one to speak to and ignorance was all pervasive. Even when no longer stridently condemned the most you might find is 'understanding' which barely amounted to an acceptance much more extensive then 'we aren't going to kick shit out of you, automatically'. Tolerance was wafer thin and utterly unsupported by sanction from schools, the laws or the churches. Quite why so many gay men are willing to pour money into supporting, via weddings etc., the very religious institutions that only came round to them when seeking to fill their ever emptying coffers by the abandonment of their straight congregations.
This is a really first rate history and I can't recommend it enough.
July 6, 2016
I find it absolutely astonishing, how similar and yet how different these men's experiences were. Fascinating.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews