“You know I like Archie Pennybet very much indeed. In fact, I think I like him better than anyone else in the world, ‘septing of course my relations.” – Edgar Doe.
One of my recurring frustrations with old books is this.
Every so often, I pick up a novel now regarded as homoerotic and wonder how on earth its first readers failed to notice what was sitting in plain sight.
A second dose from Ernest Raymond’s 1922 First World War novel, Tell England: A Study in a Generation, a book that goes to extraordinary lengths to beat around the bush.
When it was published, the poor dears read it as a patriotic, high-church Anglican tribute to the tragic “lost generation” of British public schoolboys sent to Gallipoli. The lingering focus on male beauty and passionate friendships seems to have passed them by.
You may recall from an earlier post that Raymond himself later openly acknowledged the novel’s homosexual subplot.
The first half of the novel, Five Gay Years of School, introduces the narrator, Rupert Ray, and his classmates as young men who are acutely aware of their own attractiveness, opening one school chapter with Archie Pennybet’s boast: “I’m the best-looking person in this room.” Time and again, they are presented as magnificent, almost perfect creations of God.
At the heart of the story is Rupert’s deeply emotional attachment to his classmate Edgar Doe, who is quite unmistakably homosexual. Their relationship is marked by jealousy, devotion, and emotional intensity that often resembles a love affair far more than ordinary friendship.
“I say, why does Doe avoid us now?”
“The Gray Doe,” sneered Penny. “Oh he – She’s in love, I suppose. With Radley.”
“Don’t drivel,” I commanded. “Why does he hang about with that awful Freedham?”
“When you’re my age, Rupert,” began Penny, in kind and accommodating explanation, “you’ll know that there are such things as degenerates and decadents. Freedom is one. And very soon Doe will be another.”
“Well, hang it,” I said, “if you think that, how can you joke about it, and leave him to go his way?”
“Oh, the young fellow must learn wisdom. And he’s not in any danger of being copped. I’m the only one that suspects, and I guessed because I’m exceptionally brilliant. Besides, if he wants to go to the devil for a bit, you can’t take his arm and go with him.”
“No,” I said, “but you can take his arm and bring him back.”
The schoolmaster, Radley, is described as regarding the boys with a “strong, active love.” Rupert comments: “We were his hobby. I have met many such lovers of youth.”
In the second half of the novel, the boys are sent to Gallipoli. The emotional and physical admiration established during their schooldays evolves into a romanticised martyrdom, where dying beautifully for England becomes the ultimate fulfilment of their youth.
By Jove, Ernest Raymond was clever.
He wrote about male intimacy with remarkable emotional and physical closeness without provoking the censors of the 1920s. Wrapped in high-church religiosity and fervent patriotism, it was accepted by the general public as nothing more than an innocent, heart-rending tribute to fallen soldiers.
‘I will send you a book,’ said Severin. ‘It is a German classic, but I shall make sure you get the English translation. But before you read it, you must promise me one thing: research the dead author first. Then you will understand the sadness behind it.’”
True to his word, a package appeared on the doorstep a few weeks later. Inside was a copy of At the Edge of the Night by Friedo Lampe.
Cut to 2 May 1945. Kleinmachnow, a municipality on the outskirts of Berlin. Hitler has been dead for two days. Soviet troops occupy the capital. Germany is collapsing, and everyone is afraid of what comes next.
A shabbily dressed man walks along the street, shoulders hunched inside clothes that hang too loosely from his thin frame. To suspicious eyes he resembles one of the many fugitives trying to disappear into the chaos of defeat. Two Soviet soldiers stop him and demand identification.
He hands over his papers.
But the photograph shows a sturdier, healthier-looking man. The exhausted figure standing before them looks nothing like it.
The soldiers shoot him dead.
That is almost everything we know about the death of Friedo Lampe — librarian, editor, and novelist — a writer who experienced remarkably little good fortune during his lifetime.
Born in Bremen in 1899, Lampe suffered from bone tuberculosis in his left ankle as a child, leaving him permanently disabled. He studied literature, philosophy, and art history in Heidelberg, Munich, and Freiburg before eventually working as a writer and editor.
His debut novel, Am Rande der Nacht (At the Edge of the Night), appeared in 1933, the year Hitler came to power. Lampe later remarked that the book had been “born into a regime where it could not breathe.” Writing to a friend shortly after publication, he confessed: “What do you think of it now it’s in print? Very shocking? I’m worried.”
He had every reason to be.
The Nazis quickly placed the novel on their list of “damaging and undesirable writings.” Its dreamy nocturnal atmosphere, homoerotic undertones, and depiction of a relationship between a Black man and a German woman were enough to condemn it. Copies were seized; many were almost certainly burned.
Yet even then, perceptive readers recognised its brilliance. Hermann Hesse admired the novel in 1933 and later wrote that what had struck readers “as so beautiful and powerful has not paled… it proves itself with the best, and captivates and delights just as then.”
Lampe continued writing despite censorship and growing political danger. After working for Hamburg’s public library, he moved to Berlin in 1937 to work as an editor for Rowohlt. His prose ballad Das dunkle Boot (The Dark Boat) appeared in 1936, followed by the novella Septembergewitter (September Thunderstorm) in 1937. Neither achieved significant recognition, and Rowohlt itself was seized by the Nazis in 1939.
Throughout the war Lampe lived in quiet fear. Under Paragraph 175, homosexuality remained criminalised, and gay men faced surveillance, arrest, imprisonment, and deportation to concentration camps. Lampe, himself homosexual, lived cautiously and privately. In 1943 he narrowly escaped catastrophe after being blackmailed by a male prostitute in Berlin; only the intervention of his publisher’s lawyer prevented the affair from escalating into a criminal case.
Friends described him as reserved rather than solitary: a chain-smoker, obsessive reader, and compulsive buyer of books. “It really is an illness with me,” he once admitted. “I simply must buy every book, even when I don’t have the money.”
Misfortune seemed to pursue him relentlessly.
“I never had much luck with books,” Lampe remarked bitterly in 1944. The previous year an air raid had destroyed his Berlin apartment and with it his vast personal library. Two weeks later another bombing raid destroyed the Leipzig printing works preparing a new volume of his stories, Von Tür zu Tür (From Door to Door). In 1944 he was conscripted into the German Foreign Office, where he worked analysing intercepted enemy communications.
Then came the end of the war — and his senseless death on a roadside in Kleinmachnow.
Lampe was buried beneath a simple wooden cross bearing the words: Du bist nicht einsam — “You are not alone.”
For decades he remained little more than a literary footnote. Am Rande der Nacht was republished in expurgated form in 1949, 1955, and 1986, with supposedly offensive passages removed. Only in 1999, the centenary of Lampe’s birth, did the first complete unexpurgated edition finally appear.
That restoration transformed his reputation.
Modern German critics increasingly came to regard Am Rande der Nacht as one of the great lost novels of the Weimar era: lyrical, melancholic, cinematic, and unlike anything else produced in Germany at the time. Lampe’s readership steadily grew into something close to a cult following. His collected letters were published in 2018; an English translation of At the Edge of the Night finally appeared in 2019, introducing him to a wider audience decades after his death. Johann-Günther König’s long-overdue biography followed soon after.
Today Friedo Lampe occupies the strange position reserved for certain artists: neglected in life, cherished in retrospect. The writer once condemned and erased by the Nazis is now included in The Oxford Companion to German Literature and discussed as an important rediscovered voice of twentieth-century German fiction. Perhaps that is the consolation history occasionally offers — that literature can outlive the regimes, prejudices, and accidents that once tried to silence it.
“Spendid, perfectly splendid!” replied the Colonel. “Eighteen, by Jove! You’ve timed your lives wonderfully, my boys. To be eighteen in 1914 is to be the best thing in England. England’s wealth used to consist in other things. Nowadays you boys are the richest thing she’s got. She’s solvent with you, and bankrupt without you. Eighteen, confound it! It’s a virtue to be your age, just as it’s a crime to be mine. Now, look here” – the Colonel drew up his chair, as if he were going to get to business – “look here. Eighteen years ago you were born for this day. Through the last eighteen years you’ve been educated for it. Your birth and breeding were given you that you might officer England’s youth in this hour. And now you enter upon your inheritance. Just as this is the day in the history of the world so yours is the generation. No other generation has been called to such grand things, and to such crowded, glorious living. Any other generation at your age would be footling around, living in a shallow existence in the valleys, or just beginning to climb a slope to higher things. But you” – here the Colonel tapped the writing-table with his forefinger – “you, just because you’ve timed your lives aright, are going to be transferred straight to the mountain-tops. Well, I’m damned. Eighteen!”
The passage is taken from Tell England: A Study in a Generation, a novel written by Ernest Raymond and published in February 1922 in the United Kingdom. Its themes are the First World War and the young men sent to fight it. The body of the novel is divided into two halves (or “books”), both narrated by Rupert Ray. The first book tells the story of his and his friends’ progress through school; while the second deals with the experiences of (specifically) Ray and his friend Edgar Doe during the war.
Forty-five years after the novel’s publication, Raymond wrote: “Another thing that is a cause of wonder to me as I re-read the book is the indubitable but wholly unconscious homosexuality in it,” since “‘homosexuality’ was a word which — absurd as this seems now — I had never heard.”
Fate is inscrutable, chance is unreadable, and circumstance is unfathomable. No one knows what he may one day suffer. The private sorrows of Sir James Barrie illustrate the insecurity of mortal happiness. Life has bestowed on him fame without stint and wealth without measure. All over the world his plays are spouting money as a gusher spouts oil. Riches pursue him day and night. He cannot escape from the golden rivers. But fame and fortune do not exempt him from the furtive blows of fate. Of his four foster-sons, Michael Llewelyn Davies was the best beloved. On the eve of his twenty-first year he perishes like Milton’s Lycidas. The witless unreason of the tragedy shocks us. Is there a grudge against glory, a spite against fame, a vendetta against dazzling fortune? Is there immunity in obscurity?
Hollacombe Court was a typical new-build apartment complex just off the Uxbridge Road. Four six-storey blocks stood around a large courtyard, entered through a gated archway at one end or via doors at the base of each stairwell. It was elegant without pretension and suited young professionals who preferred life beyond the city.
Elian—meaning God has answered—was of Iberian descent, though born in Dartford, and he had never considered moving to Spain. He had arrived at Hollacombe Court that summer and quickly became known to residents whose windows overlooked the courtyard. In his twenties, he might easily have been called handsome, and his athletic build drew the curious attention of anyone in search of an eligible bachelor.
He spent most summer evenings in the courtyard, with its cream flagstones, raised flowerbeds, and central water feature. He was often found sitting or stretched across one of the dozen stone benches set into the planted borders. He seemed to favour the one nearest the fountain, where water slipped between the fingers of the Greek god Zeus and fell into a circular pool below. Whether any of the residents could have named the statue, however, was open to question.
This was how Elian came to the notice of those living at Hollacombe Place.
Most assumed he had finished work, eaten, and chosen to pass the remaining hours of the evening outdoors with a book. That, above all, was what people noticed. While others switched on the television, Elian could almost always be seen reading. What he read remained a mystery, as few residents used the courtyard, leaving him—more often than not—undisturbed.
To those who glanced out, Elian had become a fixture. His presence lent a quiet reassurance. If, by chance, he was absent, it stirred a faint unease, as though something were amiss. Many had even taken to checking for him several times over the course of an evening. When darkness fell, it became customary to watch him close his book and make the short walk back into his block, though no one knew which apartment was his.
But there were those at Hollacombe Court who watched Elian for more selfish reasons. Had you challenged them, they would have denied it, yet it was hard to ignore that they had fallen in love with him—his Mediterranean looks, olive skin, and thick, black hair. On hot, humid days, they took particular pleasure in seeing him in football shorts, his six-pack on show, his long, smooth legs stretched out before him.
Elian enjoyed those evenings because he was an avid reader, with a particular fondness for novels, and for that reason he never felt lonely. He could summon characters from any book he had read; they were his companions.
His favourite writers were Lee Child, Alan Hollinghurst, and Colm Tóibín, and he often imagined himself as the protagonist in their novels. He had also discovered the work of André Aciman and Tim Parks, whose books stirred his imagination in different ways. When he finished a novel, he placed it carefully on his bookshelf, arranged by author and in order of publication. The classics, however, held little appeal; he found them too dour and overly wordy for his taste.
But reading aside, there was another reason Elian liked to sit in the courtyard.
Reading in full view of so many people made him feel connected. He knew they watched him, desired him even, and he welcomed the attention. He wanted to belong to a society that saw only his outward form; his need for acceptance was universal. Being seen confirmed his existence and importance, satisfying a deep psychological need for belonging. At times, he wondered whether this desire to be observed was a way of compensating for a lack of inner confidence.
And he was able to do this without interference. He liked that people looked at him yet respected his solitude. This paradox became a careful balance between the social need for validation and the personal need for quiet, self-reflection, and protection. He wanted the thrill of being in the spotlight, but also the safety of anonymity. When alone, Elian was answerable to no one, and in that freedom he could exist without fear of judgement.
And so the summer passed in a kind of quiet contentment. Elian with his books, and the curious residents of Hollacombe Court satisfied to watch over him.
It was the story that gave this site its name. Perfectly Hard and Glamorous was originally meant to be nothing more than a platform for a single, serialised story. But it didn’t quite turn out that way—other characters and other stories found their way in, and gradually took over.
The journey began four years ago and came to an end yesterday. Along the way, it wandered, stirred a bit of controversy, and at times became unexpectedly difficult to write. But despite all the twists and turns, it arrived where it was meant to—just not quite where I had imagined.
I wrote it mainly for myself. It was a way of proving that I could sustain something long-form and actually see it through without losing momentum. It also gave me space to experiment with different styles. Because of that, it isn’t perfect—but I enjoyed writing it, even if it didn’t always find an audience. I could go back and start again, reshape it entirely, but there are too many other things now that I want to write.
So how does it feel?
Strange, really. A mix of emotions. There’s a sense of achievement—a quiet, personal victory—but also a lingering sense of loss. Almost like a small ending, or a kind of absence. I imagine it’s not unlike what authors feel when they finish a novel.
The characters stay with you. Some you grow fond of, others less so, but they all leave their mark. So, goodbye to Harry, Andy, and Jack. Goodbye to Paolo—who I grew so attached to that I had no choice but to let him go. Goodbye to Tom, who may yet find his way into something else. And goodbye to Park Hill in Sheffield—seen here from its struggles in the 1980s to its later reinvention.
It’s over now.
On finding an old photograph by Herbert List…
In 1945, Herbert List faced the ruins of Munich just as the dust had settled, capturing the wreckage and those who remained to pick up the pieces. The devasted Academy of Arts’ storeroom. The figural group on the left is probably a design for a large motorway monument by Josef Thorak. The seated figure in the middle is a plaster cast of the seated Hermes of the Herculaneum with an aries-relief from the school of German artist Adolph Hildebrand.
On dreaming about Pasolini in Roma…
Short pieces written between 1950, when Pasolini arrived in Rome, and1966.
Whilst in Paris, in brief moments of sleep, I dreamt that I met Pasolini in Rome and he gave me a book to read. It was a collection of short stories about the city which he had written when he was young. I told Thomas about the dream, and he secretly ordered me a book that was delivered the next day by a cute Algerian guy. Reading it, I realised I had subconsciously named a character in one of my own stories after Pier Paolo Pasolini.
I might be the reincarnation of Pasolini. The more I write; the more shocking it becomes, and soon I shall be left with only gay porn to write about. But Pasolini’s writing career faded and he directed films instead that were also shocking. And Thomas said that the more daring we become, only murder can silence us. My friend, Freddie the Fraud, once told me that when I am in Italy, the ghost of murdered Pasolini follows me, like he wants to get into my shorts.
On finding an old manuscript about William Butler Yeats…
John Singer Sargent, 1908. From a charcoal drawing. Frontispiece to Yeats
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer and literary critic.
He was ‘not available’ to admiring young men.
“No,” the young Irishman would have said. “Surely the stirrings within me are meant for naught but the fairer sex, and no other creature besides.”
Katharine Tynan, a prolific Irish poet and novelist who was a regular contributor to The Sketch magazine during the 1890s, was one of those who were enamoured by him:
Prominent in the disorder is a book bound like a mediaeval missal in cherry-coloured brocade and tarnished gold.
What may that fine thing be I ask. He answers with a slight blush. “That is my MS book. A friend brought me the cover from Paris, and I had the book made to fit it.”
I inspect the book. It is such thick paper as one finds in editions (le luxe, and, one imagines, must be rather uncomfortable to write upon). The fine book is a part of the literary dandyism which rather distinguishes Mr. Yeats.
In the old Dublin days he was as untidy as a genius newly come from the backwoods. He was an art student then, and generally bore the stains of the studio.
He used to affect scarlet ties, which lit up his olive face. They were tied most carelessly. Ordinary young men who had been at school with him, and resented his being a genius, used to say that the carelessness was the result of long effort but one never believed them.
Now he wears the regulation London costume, plus a soft hat, and his ties are dark silk, knotted in a soft bow. He is extremely handsome in his strange way; he is very tall and very slender, so dark that he was once taken for a Hindu; by a Hindu, a long, delicate, oval face, beautiful brows, and large, melancholy, velvety brown eyes that see visions.
There used to be a picture of Willie in his boyhood on an easel over against me as I sat. The dusky face had carnations in the cheeks which now are pale olive. If it was at all representative of him, he must have been a beautiful boy, full of rich Eastern colour. I did not meet him till a year or two later, when he had assumed the man’s colourless cheeks, with the silky, dark, very youthful beard he then wore.
William Butler Yeats – The Sketch – Wednesday 29 November 1893
On not giving PSB about The Beatles…
Pet Shop Boys Volume: The complete visual record. Chris Heath, Philip Hoare. Thames and Hudson, 2026
Why does every generation have an obsession with The Beatles? The fucking Beatles. I’m one for old music but I don’t get the hype around them. It wasn’t as if they lasted long. Boring. Give me the Pet Shop Boys. They’ve lasted longer and still hit us like they’re trying to be young again. But the gay one doesn’t/never appealed to gays, while the straight one did/does. Happy 40th Anniversary.
On watching Before Night Falls…
Javier Bardem and Johnny Depp in Before Night Falls, 2000
Reinaldo Arenas, an exiled Cuban writer suffering from AIDS, took his own life in New York in 1990. It was a dramatic end to a dramatic life—the final escape of someone who had always been in flight: first from abandonment and neglect as a child, then from stark poverty, and finally from sexual and political persecution. Arenas was imprisoned several times in Cuba by Castro’s government, his manuscripts frequently confiscated. On one occasion he was detained on a vague morals charge and subjected to repeated indignities and cruelties, including torture. He arrived in the United States during the Mariel boatlift of 1980, that headlong exodus of more than a hundred thousand people—an event he renders vividly in his memoir, Before Night Falls, published in 1993.
I confess I knew nothing of his story until I watched Julian Schnabel’s 2000 film, drawn from both the autobiography and Jana Boková’s 1990 documentary Havana.
A few things to note. Javier Bardem is excellent as Arenas. But others linger: Johnny Depp—who once took a piss beside me—appears twice, as the outrageous Bon Bon with the big arse and as Lt. Víctor; Sean Penn turns up as Cuco Sánchez; and Olivier Martinez as Lázaro Gómez Carriles. It was Martinez who did it for me. Handsome—absurdly so. Not anymore. He dated Kylie for a while, married and divorced Halle Berry, and somewhere along the way the looks went with it.
“The self-righteousness of that age was really camouflage to disguise its own hypocrisy, and the people who were loudest in their condemnation of my father were often those whose own lives could least bear investigation.”
– Vyvyan Holland writing in Son of Oscar Wilde. Published by Rupert Hart-Davis (1954)
And I can’t help thinking that the same still applies…
– Being the transcript of a letter unearthed in the long-sealed vaults of the Royal Bank of Scotland, November 2025
George Walker Wood 66 Cavendish Street, Marylebone London
29 November, 1881
My dear Reader,
If by curious chance you hold this manuscript in your hands, I entreat you to read its contents with the utmost seriousness. Only by such attentive perusal shall you perceive that the pages which follow are both an explanation and a justification for their long concealment.
Should it prove that I still draw breath when these lines meet your eye, then I beg of you—burn them without delay, and disclaim all knowledge of ever having encountered them. The shame that would ensue from their divulgence is of so dreadful a nature that I scarcely dare commit the thought to paper.
I shall therefore begin at the point where first I made the acquaintance of one Johane—an Irish youth of some four-and-twenty years, of humble condition, and with every outward appearance of one who might easily draw misfortune to my door. He was, however, most commonly called Jack, and by that familiar name I shall refer to him henceforth. Dear Jack belonged to a loose fraternity of young loafers and street-bred rascals—variously known as the “London Boys”—a wild and merry set whose manners were as questionable as their morals, yet whose very recklessness possessed, for me, an unaccountable fascination.
In time I grew most attached to Jack, and he attended me frequently at my lodgings in Marylebone. There, behind doors safely bolted, we indulged in certain intimacies which, though common enough within that unseen sphere of which London pretends ignorance, would cause polite society to feign horror. Jack’s person was slight, his garments threadbare and ill-assorted, and he bore all the marks of those who are forced to wrest their sustenance from the streets; yet beneath that rough exterior there was a warmth and vigour not easily described. When fortune smiled and I had a few coins to spare, he would remain with me until morning, and those nights—cold, anxious, sweet as they were—remain fixed in my memory.
I suspect that my landlady, Mrs. Chivers, a stout matron of no small curiosity, had taken something of a liking to Jack as well; for once I discovered him seated at her kitchen table devouring a modest breakfast of bread and scrape. The glint of mischief in his eye, as he looked up at me over the crust, told me all I needed to know. She had chosen to see nothing of the nature of my rooms above.
My days were spent at the old desk overlooking Cavendish Street, where I composed articles for The London Figaro and The Dark Blue. Yet I had long nourished the ambition to attempt a novel—something that might echo, however faintly, the triumph of A Tale of Two Cities. My parents, never slow to remind me of my deficiencies, assured me that I lacked both imagination and creative faculty, that I was fit only to set down facts and order them neatly upon a page.
Still, I could not forget the tales Jack whispered to me during those winter nights—tales of gentlemen of rank who sought his company at a high price; of drawing-room adventures veiled beneath the richest draperies; of temptations and behaviours of which the world speaks only in scandalised murmurs. Spurred by these accounts, I sought the acquaintance of a certain printer known to an associate of Henry Ashbee—a man whose livelihood depended upon the discreet production of pamphlets of a decidedly provocative character.
Mr. William Lazenby, a sharp-eyed fellow, showed interest in my idea and agreed to an initial impression of two hundred and fifty copies. He offered me a share of the profits, subtracting his considerable costs, should I but write with candour. The sums he mentioned far exceeded any I had yet earned, and the promise of so easy a reward was exceedingly tempting. He informed me that the book should be sold exclusively by mail-order through an address in Paris, and insisted that I adopt a nom de plume, lest I bring inevitable ruin upon myself.
When I conveyed the scheme to Jack, he immediately demanded—nor without justice—a share of the proceeds, and further insisted that his own name be affixed to the work. I warned him that the police might take a dim view of such recklessness, but he merely laughed and declared that the “mutton-shunters”, knowing full well he could neither read nor write, would never suppose him connected to any printed matter. With that he tumbled himself upon the bed in his usual impudent fashion and suggested that we commence our “research” without delay.
By June the manuscript was completed, and I had settled upon what I deemed a most fitting title—The Sins of the Cities of the Plain. Though Mr. Lazenby scoffed at it, he conceded that the biblical suggestion would doubtless catch the eye of those gentlemen who take an interest in such hidden matters. I confess I feared that certain passages, dealing as they did with the concealed customs of our clandestine fraternity, might prove too recognisable to those acquainted with that shadowed realm.
Lazenby nevertheless published the work in two parts, and it found immediate favour among readers eager to feast upon the covert indulgences of the great and respectable.
Though I tremble at the thought of its reception, I take comfort that my own name has thus far escaped suspicion. I offer here my apologies to Mr. Simeon Solomon and Mr. James Campbell Reddie—both of whom have been unjustly whispered about in connection with this deception. Jack, meanwhile, basks in the admiration of his companions and seems persuaded that a century hence his name will still be spoken among certain circles of “inverts”, as he jests.
This very day I have deposited my first earnings at the Lombard Street branch of Messrs. Glyn, Mills, Currie & Co., alongside this confession, sealed and hidden, to remain in the vault until such time as Providence ordains its discovery. Should that day come, I trust that The Sins of the Cities of the Plain shall be regarded as a truthful and unvarnished portrait of those whose society I have come to cherish.
Ever, dear Reader, your faithful servant,
𝒢. 𝒲𝒶𝓁𝓀𝑒𝓇 𝒲𝑜𝑜𝒹 ⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣ George Walker Wood
*****
Now read on to separate fact from fiction.
This edition contains the unabridged text of the first edition housed at the British Library, together with a new introduction by Wolfram Setz and a facsimile reproduction of the original volumes’ title pages.
The Sins of the Cities of the Plain is an influential Victorian erotic novel, originally published anonymously in 1881 and widely considered one of the first works of exclusively gay pornography in English. It is a fictionalized memoir attributed to real-life Irish prostitute Jack Saul.
The book is a narrative, presented as the “recollections” or “memoirs” of Jack Saul, detailing his experiences as a young male prostitute (a “Mary-Ann” or “rentboy”) in the clandestine gay underworld of Victorian London. It traces his escapades from boarding school into young adulthood, describing his sexual encounters with various men, from schoolboys and guardsmen to wealthy aristocrats and members of high society.
While attributed to Jack Saul, the actual author is debated by scholars, with some suggesting a ghostwriter or figures like the painter Simeon Solomon or James Campbell Reddie were involved. The book was privately printed in two volumes in 1881 by William Lazenby to avoid obscenity laws and sold for a high price.
The original printings are unobtainable today, but modern editions are widely available from various publishers, such as Valancourt Books and Mint Editions.
Germaine Greer – The Boy. Published by Thames & Hudson (2007)
Baron Corvo once told me in a dream that I should write something controversial. Terrible advice, obviously. But here we are.
I found a book in a charity shop that Charlie told me not to buy. He said it was distasteful. Which, of course, made me want it more.
The book was Germaine Greer’s The Boy — a 2003 art history study about how young males have been represented in Western art. Greer argued that, for centuries, it was the male body — not the female — that dominated the gaze. Art, she said, used to worship men. Then we decided that kind of looking was shameful.
When it came out, The Boy caused an uproar. Greer said she wanted to help women reclaim their “capacity for visual pleasure,” to look at men the way art has long looked at women. Then she dropped her most infamous line: “A woman of taste is a pederast — boys rather than men.” Predictably, everyone lost their minds.
The book is filled with over 200 images — statues, paintings, portraits — each exploring what Greer called the “evanescent loveliness of boys.” The soldier. The martyr. The angel. The narcissist. The seducer. It’s the sort of book that doesn’t end up on display in Oxfam, which is precisely why I found it there.
The cover shows Björn Andrésen, the Swedish actor who played Tadzio in Death in Venice (1971). The photograph was by David Bailey, but Andrésen said no one asked permission to use it. He was furious — disgusted, even. “I have a feeling of being utilised that is close to distasteful,” he said. And the irony? The week I bought the book, he died, aged seventy.
Björn Andrésen with Luchino Visconti on the set of Death in Venice. Photograph: Mario Tursi
Every obituary revisited the same scene: the audition tape from Death in Venice that was included in The Most Beautiful Boy in the World — a documentary about his life. Visconti tells him to smile. Then to undress. He laughs nervously. Strips to his trunks. Shifts under the gaze of men deciding whether he’s beautiful enough.
It’s hard to watch now. Visconti — Count of Lonate Pozzolo, titan of Italian cinema, and apparently, chaos in a cravat — ends up looking less like a mentor and more like a predator. But dead men can’t explain themselves.
When I was fifteen, I’d probably have thought that kind of attention was glamorous. Maybe I’d have handled it. Maybe it would’ve destroyed me. Hard to know. My own encounters with predatory men later on made Visconti look almost saintly by comparison. At least he left art behind. Maybe Andrésen’s story isn’t just one of exploitation, but what happens when fame and beauty collide with someone who’s too young to bear it.
Charlie, meanwhile, can’t stand The Boy. But he loves Death in Venice. He called Tadzio a “beau.” When I asked what that meant, he said: “The boy is beautiful. It’s sensuous, not pederastic. I’m surprised no one’s remade it.”
Which — yes — feels like a double standard. Both the book and the film are about the same thing: beauty. The kind we no longer know how to look at without flinching.
Could Death in Venice ever be remade?
I doubt it. The original is a masterpiece, and also completely unmakeable now. Mann’s 1912 novella was already controversial — a composer obsessed with a boy — and Visconti turned that tension into pure cinema. But in 2025, the moral landscape is different. Post-Me Too, post-Epstein, even looking can feel like a crime. No studio would touch it.
Unless you flipped it.
Make Tadzio older. Make the story less about sex and more about time — the hunger for youth, stillness, lost purity. Desire becomes existential, not erotic. If Visconti made the tragedy of seeing, a modern director — Luca Guadagnino, Todd Haynes, François Ozon, Joanna Hogg, Andrew Haigh — could make the tragedy of knowing you’re looking.
Visconti’s gaze was romantic. Ours would have to be self-conscious.
In their own way, both The Boy and Death in Venice celebrate the same thing — male beauty, youth, the brief perfection of being looked at before it fades. Once upon a time, that was sacred. Now it’s scandalous. Somewhere along the line, admiration turned into suspicion.
So yes, Baron Corvo told me to write something controversial. Bad idea from a worse man. But maybe he was right about one thing: sometimes, it’s worth writing about what we’re not supposed to look at.
Dirk Bogarde in Death in Venice (Morte a Venezia). Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive
Death In Venice (a.k.a. Morte a Venezia). Original British quad movie poster
A schoolboy dropped onto the bench beside me. Grey blazer, black trousers, loosened tie, scuffed shoes. I noticed everything that didn’t matter. A rough diamond, I thought – though his sparkle wouldn’t cut much around here.
The riverside benches stretched empty, yet he chose mine. I should’ve told him to shove off. His presence made me feel exposed, grimy. How old was he? Fourteen? Fifteen? Sixteen? I couldn’t pin it.
He glanced at my book. “What’s it about?” The cover stared up at me like a mute witness. Say something. Anything.
Instead, he dug in his bag and handed over his own. HappyHead. Yellow jacket. Boy in a green hoodie. Like Hunger Games, but better.
A woman passed with a rat-sized dog that barked like it deserved drowning. She glanced at us — too long, too sharp. The boy grinned. “He’s my dad.” I was far too young to be. Her cheeks flared; she looked away.
I slid him The Outsiders. Black cover, five combs — four white, one yellow, streaked with red. The misfit.
He read the first lines aloud –
“When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home. I was wishing I looked like Paul Newman – he looks tough and I don’t – but I guess my own looks aren’t so bad.”
A smirk tugged his lips, then he handed it back. Game recognised game.
Perfectly Hard and Glamorous 