Items

• Human warmth : & other stories
  Twelve short stories featuring gay and lesbian characters, which strive for “some kind of universality, even when dealing with very specific homosexual content”, according to the author’s preface. Daniel Curzon (1938-) is a former journalist for publications such as ‘Gay News’, and a now-retired professor of English. In the mid-1970s, Curzon edited and published ‘Gay Literature – A New Journal’, a literary quarterly which folded after eighteen months. Following ‘Something You Do in the Dark’ (Putnam’s,1971), dubbed the “first gay protest novel”, Curzon wrote (and sometimes self-published) several other short story collections, novels, plays, poems and humorous titles, including ‘The Joyful Blue Book of Gracious Gay Etiquette’. His novel ‘From Violent Men’ was also seized in ‘Operation Tiger’.
• Men loving men : a gay sex guide and consciousness book
  Disappointed by the heterosexism of ‘The Joy of Sex’ (1972), Mitch Walker (1951-) produced this practical sex guide for men “who want to love other men” and “be themselves”, in the same year as Charles Silverstein and Edmund White published ‘The Joy of Gay Sex’. Walker also emphasises queer kinship, distinguishing a more emotionally and socially encompassing “gayness” from a medico-scientific “homosexuality”. Explanations of sexual acts such as masturbation and fellatio are interspersed with quotations and images on love and sex between men from other times and cultures. The book is illustrated with expressive line drawings by Bill Warwick and black-and-white photography by David Greene. Copies of ‘Men Loving Men’ sent to ‘Gay News’ in the late 1970s were destroyed by Customs. It also met with Customs’ disapproval in Canada and New Zealand, where it was banned as indecent in 1983.
• Now let's talk about music
  Riding high on his wildly popular Peter and Charlie trilogy (also seized by Customs), Gordon Merrick (1916-1988) continued to publish paperback romances with Avon into the 1980s. ‘Now Let’s Talk About Music’ gave Merrick’s fans more of what they wanted – exotic locations (Thailand, a yacht off the coast of Sri Lanka), rich, beautiful gay men, steamy sex scenes and page-turning drama. “Another winner from the gay Harold Robbins” proclaimed a reviewer for ‘Gay News’ in December 1982. As with several other Merrick titles published by Avon, the cover art is by Victor Gadino, a noted illustrator of romance and erotica.
• The boy from Beirut : and other stories
  Robin Maugham (1916-1981), Second Viscount Maugham of Hartfield and nephew of the novelist W. Somerset Maugham, wrote short stories, novels, screenplays, plays and non-fiction. “Bisexual, though predominantly homosexual”, as he put it, Maugham published his first short story in 1943 (‘The 1946 Ms’, praised by George Orwell), turning more to gay themes in his post-1970 work. Published posthumously, Maugham’s ‘The Boy from Beirut’ consists of eight short stories, introduced by writer and former editor for ‘Gay News’, Peter Burton. These stories draw partly on Maugham’s time in North Africa during the Second World War and had all previously been published in the UK. The volume closes with Burton’s long interview with Maugham, first published in ‘Gay Sunshine’ magazine in the Summer/Fall edition, 1977 (no. 33/34).