Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
Queer City: Gay London from the Romans to the Present Day
by Peter Ackroyd (Chatto & Windus, £16.99)
It is a Saturday afternoon in April—hesitant spring sunshine, the promise of sap rising— and Soho’s Old Compton Street is churning with life. The air is filled with the stop-start grumble of traffic and fragments of conversation: “so I said no,” “that new sushi place,” “Lol,” “where are we going now?” Some people appear to be locals, like the middle-aged couple with matching crewcuts who are trying to hold hands while juggling bags of groceries, or the pensioner with seen-it all eyes sipping his pint by the entrance of the Admiral Duncan pub. Far more people have the tourists’ habit of flicking glances in all directions, as if worried they might be missing the one experience that would complete the jigsaw puzzle of their holiday.