Brock Evans heads for Hollywood in 1935, hoping to be the next Clark Gable, and meets another would-be star in Randy Pearce, who works as a soda jerk while awaiting his big break. It’s love at first sight, just like in the movies. But the path to stardom in Hollywood is not quite that easy. [...]
Filed under: 1930's, 1½ stars, America, Leslie H Nicoll, Reviews | Tagged: 1930’s, 1½ stars, America, Leslie H Nicoll, Reviews, S.E. Taylor | 1 Comment »
Josef Jaeger turns thirteen when Adolf Hitler is appointed Germany’s new Chancellor. When his mother dies, Josef is sent to Munich to live with his uncle, Ernst Roehm, the openly-homosexual chief of the Nazi brown shirts. Josef thinks he’s found a father-figure in his uncle and a mentor in his uncle’s lover, streetwise Rudy, and [...]
Filed under: 1930's, 4 stars, Fiction, Jere' M. Fishback, Reviews, YA | Tagged: 1930’s, 4 stars, Fiction, Jere' M. Fishback, Reviews, YA | 2 Comments »
The “American hunk” is a cultural icon: the image of the chiseled, well-built male body has been promoted and exploited for commercial use for over 125 years, whether in movies, magazines, advertisements, or on consumer products, not only in America but throughout the world. American Hunks is a fascinating collection of images (many in full [...]
Filed under: 1900's, 1910's, 1920's, 1930's, 1940's, 1950's, 1960's, 19th Century, America, Leslie H Nicoll, Photography, Resources, Reviews, five stars | Leave a Comment »
When Harry Watson, an attractive and personable ex-Guardsman, becomes involved with the young novelist Martin Murray, he is quick to assimilate Martin’s left-wing views. He fits readily into Martin’s circle, along with the earl’s daughter and communist Lady Nellie Griffiths, her playboy nephew Pugh, and the unconfident Oxford undergraduate Gavin Summers. But then Harry’s enthusiasm [...]
Filed under: 1930's, England, Essential Reads, Fiction, Reviews, Spanish Civil War, five stars | Leave a Comment »
Stodgy British archivist Henry Percival-Smythe slaves away in the dusty basement of Ealing College in 1934, the only bright spot in his life his obsession with a strange Australian mammal, the thylacine. It has been hunted to the edge of extinction, and Henry would love nothing more than to help the rare creature survive. Then [...]
Filed under: 1930's, Australia, Fiction, Reviews, five stars | 6 Comments »
Through the centuries, lives and loves have been lost to the shadows. Stevie Woods brings redemption and a new love in DEATH’S DESIRE; Jardonn Smith has a frisky ghost showing two men the pleasures of love in GREEN RIVER; and Charlie Cochrane’s tale of future love is predicted by a ghost in THE SHADE ON [...]
Filed under: 18th Century, 1930's, 19th Century, 3½ Stars, Anthology, Fiction, Reviews, novella | 1 Comment »
Looking at The Lord Won’t Mind from a historical perspective Title: The Lord Won’t Mind Author: Gordon Merrick Published: 1970; republished in 1995 Length: 255 pages Charlie Mills and Peter Martin are both young, handsome and well-endowed. They meet and fall madly in love. The book follows Charlie’s path from a closeted gay man to [...]
Filed under: 1930's, 4 stars, America, Leslie H Nicoll, Reviews, history | 9 Comments »
In 1919 His Lordship declares that the Western Front may now be secure but the home front is still being undermined by Prime Minister Lloyd George and all his damned meddling . Only the humble gardener, Freddy has the intelligence to make money out of the new garden city full of homes fit for heroes [...]
Filed under: 1900's, 1920's, 1930's, Fiction, Reviews, World War I, unrated | 5 Comments »
The powerful and moving film adaptation of Martin Sherman’s award-winning stage play. For almost 20 years, Bent has stunned theatre audiences around the world. Now adapted for the big screen by the author himself, this inspiring tale of love over oppression has even greater power and poignancy. Set amidst the decadence of pre-war fascist Germany, [...]
Filed under: 1930's, 4½ Stars, Reviews, films | 3 Comments »
The Private Pictures of Montague Glover. A Class Apart is a selection of photographs and letters culled from the archive of Montague Glover (1898-1983) documenting the intimate, rarely recorded lives of gay men in Britain from the First World War to the 1950s. The book features Glover’s three obsessions: the Armed Forces, working-class men, and [...]
Filed under: 1900's, 1920's, 1930's, 1940's, 1950's, Erastes, Essential Reads, Photography, Resources, Reviews, True Life, World War I, World War II, five stars | 10 Comments »
Ray’s a former mob enforcer who heads west to live off his comfortable retirement, provided graciously by his ex-employers. He’s got it all. A new place, a new business, and he’s making a pretty good go of it. Better than most folks in 1935 California. Still, things aren’t perfect. There’s some bad stuff going down [...]
Filed under: 1930's, 4 stars, America, Fiction, Reviews, ebook, novella | Leave a Comment »
When Myron Brinig arrived in Taos in 1933, he thought he was just passing through on his way to a screenwriting job in Hollywood. But, Brinig fell in love – with the landscape, the burgeoning art colony that centred around Mabel Dodge Luhan, and especially with Cady Wells, a talented young painter who had left [...]
Filed under: 1930's, Essential Reads, Fiction, Reviews, True Life, five stars | 1 Comment »
Translated from the original German by John Brownjohn. Erneste is master of the Blue Room in a Swiss Restaurant. He is the ‘perfect waiter’, a model of order in every way, and his private life seems to embody the qualities he brings to his job. But inwardly this polite, dignified, withdrawn man has been caught [...]
Filed under: 1930's, 1960's, 3½ Stars, Erastes, Fiction, Reviews | 3 Comments »
Vienna Dolorosa by Mykola Dementiuk is a full-length historical novel set in Vienna, Austria, in an inner city hotel managed by a transvestite and doubling as a brothel for men who like boys dressed up as girls. The entire book takes place during a one-day time period — March 12, 1938, the day Hitler “invades” [...]
Filed under: 1930's, 4½ Stars, Erastes, Fiction, Reviews, World War II, history | 11 Comments »
NAPOLEON’S PRIVATES 2,500 Years of History Unzipped by Tony Perrottet Harper Entertainment, ISBN 978-0-06-125728-5 From the blurb on the author’s website: What were Casanova’s best pick-up lines? (They got better as he got older). Which Italian Renaissance genius “discovered” the clitoris? (He could have just asked the Venetian nuns). What was the party etiquette at [...]
Filed under: 13th Century, 14th Century, 15th Century, 17th Century, 18th Century, 1900's, 1920's, 1930's, 1940's, 1950's, 19th Century, 4 stars, Age of Sail, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, Early Middle Ages, Reviews, Victorian, history | 3 Comments »
Written in 1933, this classic, touching story focuses on a young man’s gay awakening in the years between the World Wars and became an instant underground classic. Kurt Gray is a shy, bookish boy growing up in small-town Michigan. Even at the age of 13, he knows that somehow he is different. Gradually he recognizes [...]
Filed under: 1930's, Fiction, Fiona Glass, Reviews, three stars | 2 Comments »
Review by Erastes From the blurb: At a meeting of republican sympathisers in London, Brian Botsford, a young middle-class writer and Cambridge graduate, meets Edward Phelan, an idealistic, self-educated London Underground worker. They share a mutual attraction. Across the divisions of class they begin an affair in secrecy. But Edward posesses “an unproblematic capacity to [...]
Filed under: 1930's, Erastes, Fiction, Reviews, five stars | 5 Comments »
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