Tuesday, 11 June 2013

The 50s: The Good Old Days!

In an in-no-way incongruous book serialisation the Daily Mail publishes an extract about gay life in Britain in the late 50s, taken from the brilliant liberal social historian David Kynaston's Modernity Britain: Opening The Box 1957-1959.
And what fun times they sound!
Brian Epstein gets arrested for "importuning", Conservative junior cabinet minister Ian Harvey gets caught with a guardsman in St James's Park - and resigns "disgraced", Liberace gets "libelled" by the Daily Mirror, ordinary gay men gas themselves, parliament ignores the Wolfenden Report's recommendation to decriminalise homosexuality...
Have to consult the actual book and see if Kynaston writes anything about what the Daily Mail was saying about gay men back in the 50s.

• Image of 1952 Sunday Pictorial article, Evil Men [from LAGNA].
Posted by Fagburn at 21:00:00
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1 comment:

  1. Anonymous12 June 2013 at 07:41

    Worth recalling that the Mail's own diplomatic correspondent in the early 1950s, Peter Wildeblood, was gay and went to jail for it.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Wildeblood

    As for the Wolfenden report, the Mail said its main recommendation "would certainly encourage an increase in perversion" (5 Sept 1957).

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