The Book Guy
What’s on Stephen Boylan’s besdide table this month?
Queer City: Gay London from the Romans to the Present Day
Asweltering August day in London in the mid-1990s. I stop with my parents at a shop on the Charring Cross Road to pick up some water. Beside the shop is a bar called 79CXR, the outside of which is thronged with men in cropped white t-shirts. We are only there for 45 seconds max but, to me, it feels like a lifetime. 79CXR is long gone now, but I brought a piece of London home with me that summer, and I clung to it.