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“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... But at least as central to her life were her close and enduring friendships with men, some gay (like Rock Hudson), others heterosexual (like Farrell). Sometimes, Farrell took her to the Polo Lounge in the Beverly Hills Hotel, where she had been going since she was a child star in National Velvet and where she liked to order caviar and chocolate-covered ...”

“... after the show is over that you register what hasn’t been treated with contempt. Women’s lib, gay pride, black power – indeed any cause likely to be favoured by the average ‘silly fucker’ from Islington or Hampstead. Such audiences don’t mind being mocked for their yoghurt and stripped pine – but it might have been a different story if The Comic ...”

“... James does this particularly well with the coastal landscape of Suffolk around Aldeburgh – Peter Grimes country. Then it is time for the ‘nicely managed crescendo’. And then it is time for bed. No doubt it is partly because of the proximity of bed (it is from his own bedroom that he has emerged with his spidery manuscript and the single candle) and ...”

“... and perhaps novel about Rupert is that he has no respect at all. Take the case of Lorraine and Peter Landau, a couple in Northwood, who took time from what one presumes was a busy schedule to write to Rupert, having seen him in The Vortex, to comment on ‘the audibility of my performance in rather pompous terms’. Rupert opened the letter while ‘deeply ...”