QUEER CITY (GAY LONDON)

Roman Londinium 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, thereby beginning a cycle of permissiveness and censure. Covering the notorious Normans, the frenzy of executions for sodomy in the early nineteenth century, the coffee bars of sixties Soho, Gay Liberation, disco music and the horror of AIDS, Peter Ackroyd tells a story of diversity, thrills and energy - but also very real terrors, dangers and risks.