Queer London

In the parks and streets of early twentieth-century London, in its restaurants, pubs, and dancehalls, a vibrant queer world not only existed but thrived, unmentioned in any traditional travel guide. That world emerges for the first time in Queer London, historian Matt Houlbrook's fascinating study of urban culture and queer sexualities. Drawing on previously unknown sources, from police reports and newspaper exposes to personal letters, diaries, and the first queer guidebook ever written, Queer London explores this world, as well as the ongoing attempts by municipal authorities to control it. Houlbrook shows that London shaped the culture and politics of queer life, and the city, in turn, was shaped by the lives of queer men. Houlbrook further reveals the complex ways in which these men made sense of their desires, and in so doing, he mounts a sustained challenge to conventional understandings of the city as a place of sexual liberation and a unified queer culture. Book jacket.

Matt Houlbrook is a lecturer in history at the University of Liverpool.