Queer Beyond London

Professor Matt Cook is a historian based at Birkbeck, University of London. He works mainly on LGBTQ history and his books include London and the Culture of Homosexuality and Queer Domesticities. Alison Oram is Professor Emerita at Leeds Beckett University where she was based before joining the University of London's Institute of Historical Research as a Senior Research Fellow. She wrote Her Husband was a Woman! and co-edited the landmark Lesbian History Sourcebook.Together, Alison and Matt wrote the National Trust's first LGBTQ guide book, Prejudice and Pride.

‘A rich celebration of the everyday LGBTQ stories that have been shaped by - and have helped to shape - modern English urban life. Insightful, inspiring, and completely fascinating.’ Sarah Waters, author of Tipping the Velvet and The Paying Guests‘Being queer is all about change: longing for it, fighting for it - and surviving it. This brilliantly detailed tour of the last fifty years of LGBTQ+ culture and lives in four great English cities digs down through the layers of history and geography and gets to the real nuts and bolts of our experiences. A real labour of love - and quite an achievement.’ Neil Bartlett, author of Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall and Address Book‘This is a book I didn’t know we needed quite so badly! It provides a riveting account of LGBTQ+ people forging new lives, creating new communities, and navigating prejudice and discrimination. It is beautifully written, and a splendid example of how oral history enriches previously untold stories.’ Dr Clare Summerskill, academic, writer and comedian‘This book took me back to my teenage years in Brighton, Manchester, Leeds, Bristol and beyond where I sought out the bars where I could belong even though elsewhere we were illegal. A world of laughter, despair, love, openness, belonging and making whoopee.’ Michael Cashman, actor, founder member of Stonewall, and member of the House of Lords ‘History should never tell just one story, and this timely book challenges the reader to think beyond a single, London-centric timeline of queer history in England since the 1960s. A ‘must-read’ for cultural historians, queer or not.’ Jane Traies, author of The Lives of Older Lesbians: Sexuality, Identity and the Life Course, and Now You See Me: Lesbian Life Stories? ‘This book tells a fascinating and compelling story. It takes us to places we know and love, and to some we didn’t know so much about. It tells local stories, personal stories, human stories. It completes the nation’s queer jigsaw. It’s a must-read.’ Chris Smith, Britain’s first openly gay MP, former cabinet minister, and member of the House of Lords'This is a rich and thought-provoking study which provides a more nuanced and more representative history that challenges national narratives and draws our attention to how locality not only shaped queer life in the past, but also emotions, memory, and community in the present. The methodology, rigorous research, and attention to hitherto overlooked stories, people, and places that underpin this book makes it an important contribution to the field, and one that should stimulate exciting further research into Britain’s queer past beyond London.'CLAIRE MARTIN, Northern History

• Introduction by Matt Cook and Alison OramPart I: Queer Cities by Matt Cook1. Britain’s Queer Playground: Swings and roundabouts in Brighton2. Split Scenes in Leeds3. Gay and civic pride in ‘Madchester’4. Naval Gazing in Plymouth Maps Part II: Queer Comparisons by Alison Oram5. Circling Around: Migration and the Queer City6. Urban Accommodation: Queer Homes, Households and Families7. Making History, Memories and CommunityEpilogueIndex