Paul Burston – författare

'Fast, wild, sexy and outrageously funny. I loved it!' Russell T. DaviesMartin is kind, decent and good-looking. And look where it's got him. His boyfriend of four years has run off with a male prostitute. His friends John and Caroline are no help - John prefers infamy to sympathy and Caroline is too busy trying to work out if her wonderful, sensitive boyfriend is a closet case. And to top it all, Martin's hippie father turns up to stay, wearing his 'Proud to be an Embarrassing Parent' badge. To escape, Martin jumps head first into hedonism, throwing himself into the gay club scene, a world of drugs and muscles, hard bodies and harder music. Meanwhile Caroline is learning that being Shameless has its price, and so does she... How long can they keep up with the lifestyle? And can they find the man of their dreams when sex has become a substitute for love, and pleasure is measured in beats per minute...?

It's here and it's queer - popular culture inhabits all our lives, whether it comes in the form of movies or magazines, TV or shopping. A Queer Romance brings together critics, writers and artists to debate the possibilites of popular culture for lesbians and gay men.In a collection that is in-yer-face but never out-to-lunch, the contributors variously revisit debates about the gaze to provide a new theory of Queer viewing; discuss texts coded as queer - from lesbian vampires to Hollywood's use of gay codes in mainstream films such as Top Gun and Black Widow; consider the sexual and cultural narratives at play in the world of home shopping catalogues; explore the pleasures and perils of gay cultural production, from the radically queer film-making of Monika Treut to the wild world of homocore fanzines, and address the possibilities of texts claiming to be for the gay spectator - from pornography `by women, for women and about women' to `Out' TV.The contributors to A Queer Romance don't all agree but, taken together, the collection argues strongly that everyone can have their queer moments.

It's here and it's queer - popular culture inhabits all our lives, whether it comes in the form of movies or magazines, TV or shopping. A Queer Romance brings together critics, writers and artists to debate the possibilites of popular culture for lesbians and gay men.In a collection that is in-yer-face but never out-to-lunch, the contributors variously revisit debates about the gaze to provide a new theory of Queer viewing; discuss texts coded as queer - from lesbian vampires to Hollywood's use of gay codes in mainstream films such as Top Gun and Black Widow; consider the sexual and cultural narratives at play in the world of home shopping catalogues; explore the pleasures and perils of gay cultural production, from the radically queer film-making of Monika Treut to the wild world of homocore fanzines, and address the possibilities of texts claiming to be for the gay spectator - from pornography `by women, for women and about women' to `Out' TV.The contributors to A Queer Romance don't all agree but, taken together, the collection argues strongly that everyone can have their queer moments.

Sex, drugs, diva tantrums: if you're on the A list, you can get away with murder ... but there's still one taboo left in Hollywood. If you're an all-action movie star hero, and you're gay, then your home is in the closet. End of discussion. Matt Walsh is at the very top of the Hollywood ladder. He easily commands $20 million per film, and every one is a box office smash. But Walsh has a secret: his lover Billy West, a rent-boy with the fragility of Monroe and the body of Brad Pitt. When British hack Simon Fowler is sent out to write a grovelling vanity piece on Walsh, he unearths the star's secret life, and a story that could destroy him. Walsh has a long way to fall, and he could take a lot of people with him.STAR PEOPLE hops over the velvet rope and points its telephoto lens at a cast of stars, hookers, paparazzi and scarier-than-hell PR bitches. The result is a smart, fast-paced and wildly entertaining novel about love, fame, jealousy . . . and murder.

Phil Davies should be happy. He has a flourishing bar in the heart of Soho and in six months he will be marrying Ashley, the man he adores (even if his nickname is 'The Incredible Sulk'). In short - he's living every gay man's dream. There's just one problem: Phil has been married before, seventeen years ago. To a woman. In fact, technically Phil and Hazel are still married. And what Phil doesn't know yet is that Hazel has a seventeen-year-old son. But that's all about to change . . .Brilliantly funny, heart-warming and filled with bittersweet observations, The Gay Divorcee is a hugely entertaining tale of love, marriage and the lies that happen in between.

"This memoir is brutally honest… Wonderful!" – Russell T. DaviesActivist. Journalist. Survivor. One man’s journey from prejudice to Pride.Paul Burston wasn’t always the iconic voice of LGBTQ+ London that he is today. Paul came out in the mid-1980s, when ‘gay’ still felt like a dirty word, especially in the small Welsh town where he grew up. He moved to London hoping for a happier life, only to watch in horror as his new-found community was decimated by AIDS. But even in the depths of his grief, Paul vowed never to stop fighting back on behalf of his young friends whose lives were cut tragically short.It’s a promise he’s kept to this day. As an activist he stormed the House of Commons during the debate over the age of consent. As a journalist he spoke up for the rights of the community at a time of tabloid homophobia and legal inequality. As a novelist he founded the groundbreaking Polari Prize.But his lifestyle hid a dark secret, and Paul’s demons—shame, trauma, grief—stalked him on every corner. In an attempt to silence them, he began to self-medicate.From almost drowning at eighteen to a near-fatal overdose at thirty-eight, this is Paul’s story of what happened in the twenty years between, and how he carved out a life that his teenage self could scarcely have imagined. Emotional but often witty, We Can Be Heroes is an illuminating memoir of the eighties, nineties and noughties from a gay man who only just survived them.