“... Gielgud, and with many of his friends. As these biographies agree, many theatrical people were gay, from top management down, and their response to the law was not defiance, much less agitation for reform, but reticence. Reticence cannot have been very difficult, their world being so enclosed; danger lay in forbidden excursions from it, and even then, one ...”

“... And he is forever boasting of his polished Euro-know-how, his multilingual communication skills. Peter Shreeve, who preceded David Pleat, was probably the sort of manager he would have wished Terry Venables to be, or to become: It was this reference to the French that was to produce a curious postscript. Peter Shreeve had ...”

“... late last year. Welby was baptised and married at HTB. He later fell out with Gumbel over gay marriage blessings, but during his time as archbishop the evangelical influence within the Church of England grew considerably. According to Graystone, ‘Marshall’s money set the agenda of the Church under Welby.’ (A source close to Marshall said he has ...”

“... In the National Theatre’s inaugural season in 1963 Michael Redgrave played Claudius to Peter O’Toole’s Hamlet. Apart from Olivier, the theatre’s first director, Redgrave, then aged 55, was its greatest star. Known to the public from his many film roles, and having just been named actor of the year by the Evening Standard for his Uncle Vanya at Chichester, which one critic called ‘the highest level of acting the contemporary theatre has to offer’, he was good box-office ...”

“... still sees that era – which began with the 1960 Lady Chatterley acquittal and ended with the Gay News prosecution in 1976 – as England’s dark age. ‘Permissive’ and ‘alternative’ remain the dirtiest words in his lexicon; his black beast is dressed in soiled denim, ornamented with hand-crafted jewellery, has long, unkempt hair, chants ‘we ...”

“... to visit their son, who has invited them out to meet his new partner. His partner turns out to be gay, and constricted Croydon morality is baffled and obscurely disgusted. But by the end of the book Russ, the spurned honeymoon groom, has been saved from drowning in a surfing accident by Terry and Tony, the gay couple, and ...”

“... which unites them, at least in retrospect, as key figures in British post-war comedy. Both were gay; both were in the closet; and both, therefore, were fully tapped into that vein of sexual subterfuge and masquerade which has always been central to the British sense of humour. Both idolised Sid Field, and learned some of the basic lessons of their craft ...”

“... subject of the Dickens industry’s symbol-hunting. He makes his point with a heavily satirised gay Canadian Cambridge don who researches ‘his’ author, surrounded by congenial works like Dickens: The Baroque Lamp and Dickens and the Twisted Metastasis. So much for the academics. Ackroyd is a versatile writer (though this is his first novel). One of his ...”

“... singing: Ah! lovely Appearance of Death!    No Sight upon Earth is so fair Not all the gay Pageants that breathe    Can with a dead Body compare. With solemn Delight I survey    The Corpse, when the Spirit is fled, In love with the beautiful Clay    And longing to lie in its stead. My current Guardian occupation and living wage (a ...”

“... have come of age. The work of two generations of researchers, led by such avatars as Alan Everitt, Peter Laslett, J. H. Plumb, Lawrence Stone, Keith Thomas and E. P. Thompson, now constitutes a substantial body of knowledge that has transformed our conception both of British history and of what constitutes legitimate historical inquiry. The modish topics of ...”

“... couple,’ purrs Joan Cortland, played by Googie Withers, as she and her husband-to-be Peter admire the mirror and themselves in its reflection. The section featuring the ventriloquist’s dummy is both a cautionary tale about the perils of ambition and envy, and a portrait of a tormented unnatural relationship. Maxwell Frere’s surname is a clue ...”

“... to the category he hated and feared. Yes, the moment of coming out, cardinal rite of passage in gay life, though of course the term ‘rite of passage’ can cover anything from bar mitzvah to auto-da-fé. I had already told my mother, not making a very good job of it. Rose-tinted spectacles is the rule when looking back at the past, though ‘pink ...”

“... His cynicism is highlighted by the fact, generally ignored (not least by those who want him as a gay icon), that from the time he himself became a bearded adult virtually all his known liaisons were with women. It was during this period that he first developed his much debated relationship with Socrates. Did Alcibiades share his mentor’s longing for true ...”

“... Ovett style of things) as a ‘cabaret dancer’. Above all, Coe has been coached by his father, Peter, who has impressed himself on the public mind, rightly or wrongly, as a self-made authoritarian gifted with inflexible will, prescient ambition and a strikingly neo-Victorian belief in ‘scientific’ progress. It comes as no surprise to learn from the new ...”

“... rap for the exquisite but evil Margot Beste-Chetwynde, and reflects onthe undeniable cogency of Peter Beste-Chetwynde’s ‘You can’t see Mamma in prison, can you?’ The more Paul considered this, the more he perceived it to be the statement of a natural law. He appreciated the assumption of comprehension with which ...”