Saturday, 14 May 2016

Writing The Century: The Experience Of Love

In 1993, Christopher Green was a scared young man, sitting alone in a hospital room with a dying man he barely knew. Chris had volunteered to be a Terrence Higgins Trust buddy, and had been introduced to the man in the bed: Kenneth Barrow, an actor and writer who had set up a mass observation diary project involving 700 gay men and lesbians. Asked to write anonymously about their everyday lives and loves, the contributors documented their lives during the years when HIV and AIDS first came to public attention, and Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1986, forbidding the 'promotion of homosexuality', was fought over and passed into law. They continued well after Kenneth's death and for over twenty years, when they were finally collected and archived as the National Lesbian and Gay Survey, alongside the Mass Observation archive at the University of Sussex...

BBC iPlayer.

The most beautiful, powerful and moving thing I've heard on the wireless all year.

2 comments:

  1. You're feeling better? On the whole, that's a good thing.

    :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Indeed it was. I heard the voices of many friends - now all long gone.

    ReplyDelete