Peter Parker and D-M Withers will be in conversation at bookhaus to celebrate the publication of three books which provide insight into the experiences and lives of gay men in the post-war, pre-Stonewall era.

Parker’s critically acclaimed two volumes Some Men in London: Queer Life 1945-59 and 1960-67 have just been published in paperback in the Penguin Modern Classics series. Some Men in London features letters, diaries, psychological textbooks, novels, films, plays and police records, covering a wide range of viewpoints, from those who deplored homosexuality to those who campaigned for its decriminalisation.

Parker’s collections are the perfect companion piece to the latest reissue from Bristol based indie Lurid Editions, A Way of Love by James Courage (1903-1963). Originally published in 1959, Lurid’s publication is the first ever new edition of this important queer novel, written by a seriously underappreciated author. 

A Way of Love tells the story of the worldly architect Bruce Quantock and his younger, inexperienced lover, Philip Dill. It is a beautifully written novel set in the late ’50s when queer communities were forced to live at constant risk of blackmail or prison. Yet it also shows a thriving and joyous subculture, and the defiant struggle gay men faced to live ordinary lives, on their own terms.

Parker and Withers will discuss the life and times of James Courage, and celebrate the career of this underappreciated mid-century author. Tickets cost £7 and include a glass of wine or a soft drink and £2 off the books. Presented by bookhaus.

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.

D-M Withers is Director of Lurid Editions, a publisher of rediscovered queer literature.