Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Queer City: Gay London from the Romans to the Present Day
    Queer City: Gay London from the Romans to the Present Day
    Queer City: Gay London from the Romans to the Present Day
    Audiobook6 hours

    Queer City: Gay London from the Romans to the Present Day

    Written by Peter Ackroyd

    Narrated by Will Watt

    3.5/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    In Queer City, the acclaimed Peter Ackroyd looks at London in a whole new way–through the complete history and experiences of its gay and lesbian population. In Roman Londinium, the city was dotted with lupanaria (“wolf dens” or public pleasure houses), fornices (brothels), and thermiae (hot baths). Then came the Emperor Constantine, with his bishops, monks, and missionaries. And so began an endless loop of alternating permissiveness and censure. Ackroyd takes us right into the hidden history of the city; from the notorious Normans to the frenzy of executions for sodomy in the early nineteenth century. He journeys through the coffee bars of sixties Soho to Gay Liberation, disco music, and the horror of AIDS. Ackroyd reveals the hidden story of London, with its diversity, thrills, and energy, as well as its terrors, dangers, and risks, and in doing so, explains the origins of all English-speaking gay culture.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAbrams Books
    Release dateMay 8, 2018
    ISBN9781683354338
    Author

    Peter Ackroyd

    Peter Ackroyd is an award-winning novelist, as well as a broadcaster, biographer, poet and historian. He is the author of the acclaimed non-fiction bestsellers, Thames: Sacred River and London: The Biography, as well as the History of England series. He holds a CBE for services to literature and lives in London.

    More audiobooks from Peter Ackroyd

    Related to Queer City

    Related audiobooks

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Encounters Diary

      Sep 3, 2020

      Encounters Diary
      5 min read

    • Article

      Welcome February 2023

      Jan 19, 2023

      Welcome February 2023
      1 min read

    • Article

      The Oldest Profession

      Sep 2, 2021

      The Oldest Profession
      2 min read

    • Article

      City Living

      Jan 21, 2021

      London and the 17th Century: The Making of the World’s Greatest City by Margarette Lincoln Yale, 384 pages, £25 In the 17th century, London was a jumbling, juggling city of work, play, debate and discord. It was the beating heart of England’s economy

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Battle of London 1939-45: Endurance, Heroism and Frailty Under Fire

      Nov 17, 2021

      Bodley Head £30 Jerry White has a unique relation to London and Londoners. More than a historian, he is the city’s witness, champion and town-crier, tolling his bell through the streets, oyez, oyez, oyez, proclaiming the latest chapter in the life of

      3 min read

    • Article

      Encounters

      Aug 3, 2023

      Encounters
      3 min read

    • Article

      In 'Dominion,' Nineteenth-century England Is Exciting Place To Be – But Not Pleasant

      Oct 30, 2018

      It takes just a few pages for Peter Ackroyd to let readers know he won’t be getting weepy over Victorian England. His clear-eyed assessment of the later stages of the British Empire includes an early nod to an era of humor and sadness, spirituality a

      3 min read

    • Article

      Tudor London: A Global City

      Apr 13, 2023

      Tudor London: A Global City
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Age Of Transformation

      Jan 19, 2023

      The Age Of Transformation
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Past Inside The Present

      Aug 5, 2021

      Time’s Witness: History in the Age of Romanticism by Rosemary Hill Allen Lane, 416 pages, £25 “The history we have,” Rosemary Hill writes in her preface to Time’s Witness, “is the history we want. It is the picture we choose to see in the clouds.” Hi

      2 min read

    • Article

      BOOKS & PODCASTS

      Feb 16, 2023

      BOOKS & PODCASTS
      2 min read

    • Article

      How Art Made The World

      Oct 11, 2023

      How Art Made The World
      5 min read

    • Article

      Crazy For Cider

      Aug 25, 2021

      JAMES CROWDEN is a poet, shepherd and total cider nut. In this, at least his third book on the subject, there is no other drink but that it suffers from his passion for cider, apple brandy and cider’s delicate, sweet sister, perry—and almost no momen

      5 min read

    • Article

      Going With The Flow

      Sep 29, 2022

      A History of Water by Edward Wilson-Lee William Collins, 352 pages, £25 This is a wonderfully entertaining and intelligent account of two loosely connected lives that, like streams, meander until they converge to form something larger. Both were 16th

      1 min read

    • Article

      Francis Spufford Vividly Recreates an 18th-Century New York in ‘Golden Hill’

      Jul 26, 2018

      Dear Reader, envision that Village which grew upon the southern strand of that isle of Manhattoes: a Lenape settlement purchased for 60 guilders and named for Amsterdam, later to be acquired by gunships of King James, and her wooden-legged governor r

      7 min read

    • Article

      The Civitas Londinium map, 1633

      Apr 5, 2022

      The Civitas Londinium map, 1633
      3 min read

    • Article

      Commentary: US Should Build A Memorial 'Plague Column' For COVID-19, But Where? Here's An Idea

      May 8, 2020

      Plague columns don't exist in the United States. The nation was founded too late, after the 17th and early 18th century European heyday of memorials built to mark the end of a blistering contagion. An epidemic's brutal cost in human lives and its myr

      5 min read

    • Article

      A Love Letter to the Luxury Hotel Bar

      Dec 5, 2023

      My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.” These were the words of Oscar Wilde on his deathbed in Paris before he lost the battle with both the wallpaper and meningitis, dying in his hotel room in late Nov

      4 min read

    • Article

      Encounters

      Feb 16, 2023

      Encounters
      5 min read

    • Article

      Culture Chronicle

      Jul 4, 2021

      Culture Chronicle
      7 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Queer City

    3.5/5

    61 ratings6 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      A fascinating and engagingly written history of queer (mostly gay) London. There is very little of early (Roman) history and the majority of the book focuses on the 16th - 19th centuries. However, it does have a disappointing end. Whilst I disagree with Ackroyd's sweeping conclusion that Clause 28 had "minimal effect" jumping from the late 19th Century to the 21st Century in two chapters, and covering AIDS in less than two pages, is a big let down. It would have been better if the book covered the 11th - 19th centuries and a volume two follow-up for the 20th/21st, there is so much that could have been covered that was sweeped aside in two chapters of opinion and claiming that it is a comprehensive view of London from the Romans to the Present Day is misleading. Still well worth a read for the detailed look at what it does cover well.
    • 1/5
      Bum fodder , as it’s biased , inaccurate and full of myths
    • 3/5
      I was thrilled to get Peter Ackroyd's QUEER CITY as a Goodreads Giveaway book. What is inside, for the most part, does not disappoint. There are so many anecdotes and stories of queer London, shocking and rude and heartbreaking and humorous, that it really puts a lot of color and character into our queer English ancestors. I appreciated the look at lesbian and gay men, and an acknowledgment that trans folks and genderqueer/genderfluid existed in the past, although we didn't have the words to describe these gender complexities back then.

      My favorite stories were probably about queer folks in power and with real societal influence. It really means a lot to me, as a bisexual woman, to hear stories of powerful queer people who, in some ways were able to live their lives authentically but could never truly be themselves, although some succeeded through using the cultural depictions of queer people to their advantage. The stories of queer women who took on traditionally masculine roles and careers and became legends of their time were outstanding and, quite frankly, inspiring.

      At times this book also broke my heart, mainly when QUEER CITY describes the desperate measures gay men would go through to avoid being arrested for just being found with another men, from leaving the country to jumping into the Thames. These men were just trying to live, but were forced to hide vital parts of themselves, arrange hook-ups in back alleys and lavatories, create elaborate codes in order to safely identify other gay men, and yet were still harassed, arrested, attacked, and killed for being men who loved other men. And, as Ackroyd points out, even though we have improved in gay rights, it is still not fully safe for queer people to be themselves out in the open. How far have we truly gone?

      This book would have been so perfect if it didn't spend so much time in the 1700's - is this where the bulk of queer history for London really takes place? This seems like an off-balance focus on one period, and by the time you get to the 1900's, it feels shoehorned in. Speaking of the 1900's/2000's last chapter, it could have used some serious editorial restraint. At one point, Ackroyd breaks away from his thesis of queer London history and goes on a rant about the "sudden" flux of gender identities and gender fluidity and the "examine your privilege" sub-culture online, none of which gels with the rest of the book and feels thrown in to fulfill some lingering personal agenda with the Twitter/Tumblr blogosphere. It was obnoxious and put a bitter aftertaste on an otherwise intelligent history of a very queer, very dynamic city.

      A reviewer copy of the book was provided for free by the Goodreads giveaway program and Beacon Press; no other compensation was offered for this review, nor was a review required to receive the book.
    • 3/5
      Queer City from Peter Ackroyd is a well-researched but unevenly written popular history of, as the subtitle says, Gay London from the Romans to the Present Day. All in all it is well worth reading though it will likely annoy as much as it enlightens.Part of the problem is that the scope is enormous for a relatively short book. For that reason depth is often sacrificed for breadth. If that were the extent of the issue it would be a minor annoyance. Yet the long span of history for which the sources are scarce and often require some conjecture take up most of the book and the period when there are ample sources and there is less speculation necessary seem to be glossed over rather than examined. For my preferences I would have preferred a slightly longer book with a more thorough and balanced review of more recent history.The facts and stories are all very interesting and the bibliography is extensive so the reader has some avenues presented for further reading and research. This is more of a popular history than a scholarly history, at least compared to scholarly histories I am familiar with, so the reading is very accessible. Any areas of confusion will likely stem from the scattershot approach that much of the early chapters seem to use. There is very little flow to the book, even taking into consideration the relatively chronological presentation.I would recommend this to any readers interested in either British/London history or historical sexuality studies. My hope is that the information presented here will be expanded upon by future writers and we will look back at this volume as a source of research avenues.Reviewed from a copy made available through Goodreads First Reads.
    • 4/5
      Book received from NetGalley.First and foremost, this particular history book is not for everyone, the subject matter can be very divisive even though the author is a marvelous researcher and writer of British history. This is one of my auto buy authors. I love his books especially his non-fiction. He somehow finds a way to bring his subject to life and draw the reader in. This book is no different, even though the subject matter can be hard to read at times. Unlike many of his history books this one is very short. This is due to how little information on the LGBTQ community in the earliest parts of the historical record. When it does show up for many years it's found in the trial records. The book mostly focuses on the Gay community in London, there is very little mentioned about Lesbians and even less about the rest of the community in general, which is also do to the persecution that seemed to be focused on the males sexual preference. If you want to know the origin of some of the worst slurs, it's in here. Why the author believes that homosexual sex became a death penalty case, it's in here. The ending of the history shows how much things have changed for the better in current times in Britain for the LGBTQ community, even though more changes need to be made, it gives some hope that it will happen. I learned quite a bit from reading this history and have plans to order myself a copy as soon as it's released. If you like Gay studies, alternative histories of Great Britain, or Social history this book should be on you want to read list.
    • 3/5
      Ackroyd has a pretty solid track record of writing interesting things about London, so I took a punt on this one, despite the alarmingly broad subtitle. Unfortunately, it's the subtitle that wins - this is a book stretched ridiculously thin, and Ackroyd is trying to pack so many facts into it that he has no space for standing back and reflecting on what he's telling us. Queer history is a difficult topic anyway, because queer desire normally doesn't leave a trace on the historical record. We know next to nothing about how the majority of people in earlier centuries saw their own sexuality and what they did about it, but we do know a great deal about how, from time to time, some people were accused of acting on their desires in ways that society or the law disapproved of, and suffered as a result. In the last thirty or forty years, people like Rictor Norton, Alan Sinfield, Alan Bray, Colin Spencer and Hugh David have gone to great efforts to dig out this kind of data, and, since almost everything they found in the historical record for the UK happened in London, Ackroyd has to recite just about all of it, at breakneck speed, with as many gruesome details as possible, and without any discussion about whether the trends these accusations and prosecutions reflect are to do with changes in queer behaviour or with phases of greater and lesser intolerance from the rest of society. Or indeed with the ever-useful unfounded accusation to blacken someone's reputation. We never get the chance to think about whether London really was a "queer city" at any given time, or about how its queerness worked geographically, it's just facts, facts, facts. Disappointing: this is probably a useful overview if you know nothing about the subject, because a lot of the original research Ackroyd summarises can be difficult to find these days. But I happen to have a good deal of that on my shelves already, and I found that Ackroyd added very little value to it.