Some Men In London: Queer Life, 1960-1967

[A] comprehensive two-volume anthology [...] Peter Parker, distinguished author of several related biographies and historical studies, has assembled a remarkable range of materials covering all aspects of this phenomenon, spanning VE Day and the passing of the Sexual Offences Act in 1967 [...] Parker adds drily witty commentary throughout

Rupert Christiansen, The Telegraph

- - Praise for Volume One

Extraordinary… fascinating

Alan Hollinghurst

Quite simply, this book is a work of genius

Matthew Parris, The Spectator

These beautifully written letters, diary entries and extracts from novels, skilfully edited by Peter Parker, add up to an essential study of postwar gay London life… Some Men in London's second volume, which takes us up to 1967, will be published in September. I'll be counting the days - this is one of the best anthologies I have ever read

John Self, The Observer

With it’s wide-ranging selection, generous biographical notes and provocative bibliography, Some Men in London is a serious and important contribution to our understanding of Britain up to today

Fiona Sampson, The Tablet

An intriguing collage of the era’s mood

Robbie Millen, The Times

As lively as a novel... a truly vital thing in a world where so many stories have been erased or criminalised

Damien Barr

This is an anthology with an immense amount to tell us about its period, scrupulously sieved, and just as much about our lives now... Peter Parker has assembled a fascinating amount of written material about the existence of homosexual men from 1945 until 1967... A wonderful range of extracts from outrageous pulp fiction makes this substantial anthology unmissable

Philip Hensher, The Spectator

Peter Parker has done a bona job across his two volumes of Some Men in London in chronicling queer life... [he creates] a collage of the gay experience – sleazy, earnest and everything in between... this latest volume almost has a bounce of optimism, of the possibility of change... can we have another volume?

Robbie Millen, The Times

Some Men in London animates mid-century gay life with panoramic, surround-sound effect, while its collage-like form makes for easily digestible reading. If you think you already know this period, think again.... a magnificent history of postwar gay life and moral panic... The rich cultural, political and social montage that emerges is the combined result of Parker’s comprehensive grasp of the period and a process of meticulous curation

Lucy Scholes, The FT

Exhaustively researched, meticulously compiled... Parker is to be congratulated for producing such an indispensable pair of books at a time when, given ongoing debates about gender and sexual identities, all queer voices of the past need to be heard, heeded and held in mind

Richard Canning, Literary Review

The non-fiction event of the year... the editing is masterful and mordant

Frances Wilson, The Spectator

Some Men in London has the democratic, unpolemical quality of a social realist novel. In its sheer range of viewpoints and incidents it shares something with the roving perspective and multitudinous voices of Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor (1851). It is a testament to Peter Parker’s skill as a compiler – his ear for the peculiar and the archetypal alike – that gay life in these years, far from being a niche or rarefied thing, comes to feel like its own epicentre, the beating heart of the city. At times it feels more urgent and vibrant by far than life in the present

James Cahill, The TLS

I’d heartily recommend Peter Parker’s Some Men of London compendium of writings about homosexuality between the end of World War II and legalisation beginning in 1967... It makes for riveting, startling, often horrifyingly comprehensive reading

Paul Flynn, Evening Standard

A monumental achievement... an irresistibly immersive history.... no brief description can capture the richness and variety of this fabulous project... Brilliantly compiled and wryly edited, it's often a darkly funny book, infused with all the joy, tragedy, strangeness and frailty of human life. I loved it.

Dominic Sandbrook, The Times