Daring Hearts the book that chronicles lesbian and gay lives in 50’s and 60’s Brighton has been made available in e-book format and is available for LGBT History Month.
The book is a searing and informative collection of life stories based on taped interviews with forty lesbians and gay men who spoke openly about their lives in and around Brighton, and which was originally published in collaboration with Brighton Ourstory Project, and is not currently in print.
In the fifties and sixties the town enjoyed a national reputation as a haven for gay people and it was viewed as a relatively tolerant place for people to visit and live.
Lesbians and gay men came from all over Britain for holidays and to settle down.
Brighton was considered a type of Eldorado, a promised land, and this tradition remains today, where its thriving gay community is one of the largest in the country, outside London.
TED one of the contributors said: “I remember one night at the Curtain Club when they had a fight… This big, butch sailor decides he’s gonna lam into one of the queans ’cause he’s not getting what he wants. Well, the quean laid him out of course, didn’t she? You should have seen it, dear, they were carrying this butch omi out on the stretcher and there’s she, standing waving her handbag like a demented windmill saying, ‘THE COW, THE COW!”
A growing number of books on gay themes were being passed from hand to hand and read until they fell apart. Some were sensational pulp novels, others such as Maureen Duffy’s The Microcosm or Rodney Garland’s The Heart in Exile were sensitive treatments of gay life by lesbian and gay authors.
On television, dramas and documentaries were attempting serious coverage of the subject and Nancy Spain was strutting her fearlessly butch stuff. On the Home Service, Jules and Sandy were treating the unsuspecting listeners of Round the Horne to bravura displays of polari.
SHEILA another contributor said: “Early sixties, Big Kay as we called her, she tried to open a private club. Jacaranda it was called and it had a private opening night party. There was no drinks allowed, you see, they weren’t allowed to sell them. But we were, naturally, having drinks but it was terribly unofficial. They’d only been charging, I think, a shilling for a drink, but they had been charging. And to our horror, the police raided us. Well, I think we all wanted to be violently sick. They didn’t arrest anybody, but they walked through the rooms and you can imagine what sort of expression they had on their faces, to see all the girls there, all dressed up. The couples were dancing, and all of a sudden somebody said, ‘The police have come.’ And I think everybody just stood stock still…”
Brighton was moving from post-war austerity towards an idea of a permissive society. Books, films, meetings, legislation, small acts of public courage together made a huge impression on lesbian and gay life in the city.
“It was wonderful to go to these things because you could just be yourself – you hadn’t to pretend or be afraid to make a glance or a gesture or say what you thought. It was wonderful to be free,” said Barbara.
You can now buy the book using Amazon Kindle, Google Play, the Apple store, and other Android outlets. Go to your chosen website and search by title for the books.
To find out more about this and other Queenspark Books and events this year, click here:
QueenSpark is a non-profit community publishing and writing organisation, based in Brighton and Hove. They publish books about local people’s lives, run creative writing groups and facilitate oral history projects.