Firstly, yes, I'm going to cover the weird last chapter at the end. That wasn't enough to stop me from giving this book five stars.

Secondly, I really enjoyed this exploration of how gloriously queer London's history has been. While the book called itself a celebration of what it is to be queer, I'm not sure how much of a celebration it felt like on my end, reading about people just trying to experience same sex love (or sex) being pilloried and dying in tortuous ways. This book is not for the faint of heart, though it's not sensationalist or exploitative so much as honest and provocative. The facts are delivered as they are, take them or leave them, despite attempts to shut down queer culture in the 18th and 19th century in particular, it persisted.

Perhaps most fascinating for me was learning just how queer the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries were. I'd previously had no idea (despite reading about these areas), and this book highlighted to me just how much of queer culture (that is to say - almost all of it) is omitted from standard history texts, or history texts that don't specifically deal with this subject. And this was probably the most joyous part of the book for me, as a queer person, just getting to learn how deliciously queer everything was. The perseverence of queerness, its tenacious holding on and sometimes raw proliferation - that, yes, should be celebrated.

Now, to the last chapter. It feels the most anomalous, and I was warned that its tone was different to previous chapters, and it really was. Honestly, I think the HIV crisis was depicted well, but I feel that the 60s were poorly referenced, and his addressing contemporary culture was frankly weird and the last two pages read like a very bizarre Twitter thread about how uncomfortable and unnecessary the phrase 'check your privilege!' is (which is obviously something that many queer youth disagree with). I feel like here, Ackroyd shows that he is an older white male historian, and not someone necessarily rolling with contemporary times - perhaps this era will need to be documented by an historian not more interested in documenting the 15th and 16th century, and I respect that. I wouldn't have minded much, but for the fact that that the last few pages felt like they were clumsily tacked on, and I feel like you can almost hear Ackroyd being like 'ughhhh I don't want to write about THIS part of history, I don't even UNDERSTAND it.'

But one chapter of only a handful of pages wasn't enough to ruin the rest for me, I'll just skip it in future. And I would caution folks not to throw the baby out with the bathwater here. This is a rich tapestry of knowledge, a deep dive of research, and a relatively impartial - and even austere - statement of the blend of facts before us. He's doing the work not many people bother to do, and he's exemplary at it. I especially liked how much attention he devoted to queer women, and his cognisance of the fact that while gay men became more 'out of the closet' earlier, women stayed into the closet for varying reasons (not least because of misogyny).

Anyway! tl;dr - Good book, will happily keep on my bookshelf, and am determined to look for more queer history now. ( )

I would guess that many of us have listened to an audiobook that we thought we’d absolutely love and instead found ourselves disappointed. Queer City by Peter Ackroyd was such an audiobook for me.

If you’re an American, as I am, you may not realize just how extensive a creative career Peter Ackroyd has had. Ackroyd is a poet, a playwright and an author of fiction and non-fiction. He is a television presenter and radio broadcaster, who has worked as a film critic, a book reviewer and an editor. He’s written several books on London and famous Londoners.

Born in London in 1949, he graduated from Cambridge. He then took a fellowship at Yale University where he met the love of his life, Brian Kuhn. Their long term relationship ended when Kuhn died of AIDS in 1994.

Given his talents and background, I don’t think anyone is better suited to attempt a history of queer London than Peter Ackroyd. And he’s clearly gathered all the research. The book is full of anecdotes and stories that stretch all the way back to (and a bit before) Roman Londinium.

The original Celtic inhabitants of the area that is now London, seemed very tolerant regarding gender roles and sexuality. By Victorian times legal strictures against homosexuality reflected the great intolerance of the day.

Indeed, one of the themes of Ackroyd’s book is that tolerance for queer folk has waxed and waned over time. At some points being gay, or being seen as gay, could ease your entry into the royal court. At other times it could lead to harsh punishments up to and including death.

Unfortunately the source material showing the existence of queer folk in London before modern times is spotty, and mostly found in trial records. This makes it very difficult for anyone, even Ackroyd, to write as comprehensive a gay history of the city as the subtitle of this book promises. So the book focuses more on time periods for which there are records, and less on others. And it presents an overly dark history reflective of the persecution of queer folk on trail.

It is certainly true that queer London history did contain much desperation and sadness. As increasing legal intolerance for queerness solidified from the 1800s on, blackmail of suspected gay men began to rise. The simple accusation that someone was gay could enable blackmail or force a man to flee the country.

And it is gay men who are the object of most stories in the book. While lesbians get some attention, they remained mostly hidden from official records and thus unavailable to the historian. There are reasons why this might be so - including higher social tolerance for emotions between, and close relationships among women - meaning more ability for lesbians to live on the down low, without legal repercussions. So historical lesbian relations represent a gap in our knowledge that Ackroyd is not really able to shed much light on.

He does dive into the history of cross dressing, which is not surprising given that one of his first non-fiction works is titled Dressing Up: Transvestism and Drag, the History of an Obsession. But he doesn’t spend a lot of time on gender identity - just a brief discussion in the very last pages of the book, in which he seems both vaguely supportive and somewhat confused about the whole concept.

I listened to the audiobook and had problems with the narration. The narrator has a smooth British accent, but his fey readings of many of the queer historical quotes found in the book didn’t always hit the target. My American ear had a hard time deciding if he was camping it up (realistically, I’m sure that’s what he was going for) or if he was instead being faintly disdainful (which is sometimes what I heard).

So, while I wanted to love this book, I was disappointed. There’s certainly a lot of history here. I did enjoy parts of the book. But it was too spotty and about two thirds of the way through I just wanted it to be finished. Two and a Half Stars ⭐⭐🌠 for me. ( )

I was thrilled to get Peter Ackroyd's QUEER CITY as a Goodreads Giveaway book. What is inside, for the most part, does not disappoint. There are so many anecdotes and stories of queer London, shocking and rude and heartbreaking and humorous, that it really puts a lot of color and character into our queer English ancestors. I appreciated the look at lesbian and gay men, and an acknowledgment that trans folks and genderqueer/genderfluid existed in the past, although we didn't have the words to describe these gender complexities back then.

My favorite stories were probably about queer folks in power and with real societal influence. It really means a lot to me, as a bisexual woman, to hear stories of powerful queer people who, in some ways were able to live their lives authentically but could never truly be themselves, although some succeeded through using the cultural depictions of queer people to their advantage. The stories of queer women who took on traditionally masculine roles and careers and became legends of their time were outstanding and, quite frankly, inspiring.

At times this book also broke my heart, mainly when QUEER CITY describes the desperate measures gay men would go through to avoid being arrested for just being found with another men, from leaving the country to jumping into the Thames. These men were just trying to live, but were forced to hide vital parts of themselves, arrange hook-ups in back alleys and lavatories, create elaborate codes in order to safely identify other gay men, and yet were still harassed, arrested, attacked, and killed for being men who loved other men. And, as Ackroyd points out, even though we have improved in gay rights, it is still not fully safe for queer people to be themselves out in the open. How far have we truly gone?

This book would have been so perfect if it didn't spend so much time in the 1700's - is this where the bulk of queer history for London really takes place? This seems like an off-balance focus on one period, and by the time you get to the 1900's, it feels shoehorned in. Speaking of the 1900's/2000's last chapter, it could have used some serious editorial restraint. At one point, Ackroyd breaks away from his thesis of queer London history and goes on a rant about the "sudden" flux of gender identities and gender fluidity and the "examine your privilege" sub-culture online, none of which gels with the rest of the book and feels thrown in to fulfill some lingering personal agenda with the Twitter/Tumblr blogosphere. It was obnoxious and put a bitter aftertaste on an otherwise intelligent history of a very queer, very dynamic city.

A reviewer copy of the book was provided for free by the Goodreads giveaway program and Beacon Press; no other compensation was offered for this review, nor was a review required to receive the book. ( )

This history of gay life in London was something of a disappointment. The early chapters definitely needed notes giving sources and I was rather disconcerted to be told that London was a city in the Holy Roman Empire. It was only from the 17th century onwards that I felt the author was on safe ground but the nineteenth and twentieth centuries flew past far too quickly and could have easily supported another book of the same size by themselves. ( )

Peter Ackroyd has written many books about London and knows his city. In this he keeps himself at arms length except where he's describing the experience of AIDS and then I discovered (and wasn't surprised) that he nursed his own partner through it (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/20/peter-ackroyd-interview-2000-years-gay-life-london). This book explores mostly the past but the constant refrain is that queers/.LGBTQIA have always been around and in some instances have been quite influential in the city and now the only real difference is that they don't have to use beards or pretend they are not what they are.

It's largely a celebration of how queer is normal and that people come in many flavours and that the only thing that we have now is different terms and fewer legal problems.

A thoughtful read and worthwhile. ( )