To celebrate the publication of Peter Parker’s Some Men in London, Penguin Classics and the London Review Bookshop host a screening of Basil Dearden’s boundary-breaking Victim (1961), followed by Parker in conversation with Mendez.
Parker’s monumental two-volume anthology Some Men in London uncovers the rich reality of life for gay men in London, from the end of the Second World War to decriminalization in 1967. Bringing together contemporary newspaper reports, letters, diaries, psychological textbooks, novels, films, plays and police records, and covering a wide range of viewpoints, the books explore what life was actually like for gay men in this period. Volume II, published on 26 September, takes us through the not-so-Swinging Sixties, on the road to partial decriminalisation – and includes an exploration of the production and release of Victim, a landmark of queer cinema starring Dirk Bogarde.
Basil Dearden’s groundbreaking drama was one of the first films to address homophobia head-on, a cry of protest against British laws forbidding homosexuality.
Hiding in plain sight, the gay community of 1960s London call Soho their home. This cloistered community lives in fear of persecution and under the shadow of blackmail. Enter Melville Farr (Dirk Bogarde): a successful barrister – and a married man – who is drawn into a murder enquiry involving a former acquaintance. As Farr finds himself increasingly implicated in the case, he becomes determined to catch those responsible and refuses to meekly accept his peers' pact of silence and role as victim.
The post-screening Q&A will be hosted by the author and LRB contributor Mendez, whose debut novel, Rainbow Milk, was shortlisted for the Gordon Burn prize.
LRB will be selling copies of Some Men in London (Volumes I and II) and Rainbow Milk in the cinema bar from 7pm. They will also be available from the London Review Bookshop before and after the event.
Peter Parker is the author of biographies of J.R. Ackerley and Christopher Isherwood, The Old Lie, The Last Veteran, Housman Country and A Little Book of Latin for Gardeners. He edited A Reader’s Guide to the Twentieth-Century Novel and Twentieth-Century Writers, is an advisory editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and contributed essays to Britten’s Century and Fifty Gay and Lesbian Books Everybody Must Read. He has written about people, books, art, architecture and gardening for a wide variety of newspapers and magazines, and lives in London’s East End.
