Peter Parker
@PParkerWriting
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Biographer (Ackerley, Isherwood), Historian (The Old Lie, The Last Veteran, Housman Country), Journalist & Editor. And out now: Some Men In London, Vol 1
London
Joined June 2013
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Coming Out (as it were) this summer...
This LGBT+ History Month, we're featuring Some Men in London, edited by
@PParkerWriting
. Rich with letters, diaries, novels, plays, and police records, the two-part anthology explores life as it was for queer men in London from the 1940s through to decriminalization.
The first
0
7
29
6
13
96
“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honourable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.”
George Bernard
#Shaw
, born 26 July 1856
2
49
231
“Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me.
The carriage held but just ourselves
And immortality.”
Emily Dickinson, died 15 May 1886
#emilydickinson
#poetry
5
49
214
“Starting a novel is opening a door on a misty landscape; you can still see very little but you can smell the earth and feel the wind blowing.”
Iris Murdoch, born 15 July 1919
#irismurdoch
#Novel
5
53
190
Royal couturier Norman Hartnell was featured in a newspaper article in 1950 about “Three famous men who can’t find the right girl”. Given that the other two were Terence Rattigan and Ivor Novello, I think we know why.
The full article appears in my anthology ‘Some Men in London’.
14
22
185
“One of the reasons why old people make so many journeys into the past is to satisfy themselves that it is still there.”
Ronald Blythe, who celebrates his centenary today (born 6 November 1922).
#ronaldblythe
#Centenary
#100yearsold
#akenfield
5
44
180
“And what is Life?—An hour-glass on the run,
A Mist retreating from the morning sun,
A busy, bustling, still repeated dream;
Its length?—A minute’s pause, a moment’s thought...;
And happiness?—A bubble on the stream...”
John Clare, born 13 July 1793
#johnclare
#poem
6
55
176
“As I sweat it out in the early hours... I want to bear witness to how happy I am, and will be till the day I die, that I was part of the hated sexual revolution; and that I don't regret a single step or encounter I made.”
Derek
#Jarman
, died 19 Feb 1994
1
43
166
“I am unable to believe in a God susceptible to prayer. I simply haven’t the nerve to imagine a being, a force, a cause which keeps the planets revolving in their orbits, and then suddenly stops in order to give me a bicycle with three speeds.”
Quentin Crisp, died 21 Nov 1999
7
34
159
“At eighteen I looked like a respectable great uncle, M&S pullover, trousers – probably with turn-ups – shoes from Dolcis, which had one of those X-ray machines that delighted us as kids, all unaware of any danger.”
Derek Jarman, 8 August 1993
#derekjarman
2
20
147
“Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.”
Cyril Connolly, born 10 September 1903
#cyrilconnolly
#writing
4
39
140
“The sun shone and larks and partridges and magpies and hedgesparrows made love and the trench was made passable for the wounded that will be harvested in a day or two.”
Edward Thomas, 8 April 1917 (and killed the following day)
#edwardthomas
#warpoetry
#westernfront
2
41
132
“Live all you can: it’s a mistake not to. It doesn’t matter what you do in particular, so long as you have had your life. If you haven’t had that, what have you had?”
Henry James, born 15 April 1843
#henryjames
2
33
123
“Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.”
Charlotte Brontë, born 21 April 1816
#charlottebronte
5
22
118
“Problems of human behaviour still continue to baffle us, but at least in the Library we have them properly filed.”
Anita Brookner, died 10 March 2016
#anitabrookner
3
28
115
“I’d like to have the most enormous library, and I’d like to think that I could read those books forever and forever, and die unlamented, unknown, unsung, unhonoured - and packed with information.”
Sir Richard Francis Burton, born 19 March 1821
#sirrichardburton
#books
10
25
110
“It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone.”
Vita Sackville-West, born 9 March 1892
#vitasackvillewest
3
22
109
“I’m not absolutely certain of the facts, but I rather fancy it’s Shakespeare who says that it’s always just when a fellow is feeling particularly braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with the bit of lead piping.”
P.G.
#Wodehouse
, born 15 October 1881
2
20
105
“In the end we only regret the chances we didn’t take, the relationships we were afraid to have, and the decisions we waited too long to make.”
Lewis Carroll, died 14 January 1898
#lewiscarroll
#cldodgson
2
38
103
“Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.”
Marcus Tullius
#Cicero
, born 3 January 106 BC
2
35
97
“Joseph, Mary, pray for those
Misled by moonlight and the rose,
For all in our perplexity.
Lovers who hear a distant bell
That tolls from somewhere in their head
Across the valley of their dream…
Pray for us romantics, pray.”
W.H. Auden, from his Christmas Oratorio.
#whauden
0
21
101
“What happens with friendships undertaken at the age of forty? Do they flourish and live long? I suppose a good mind endures, and one is drawn to it, owing to having a good mind myself. Not that Tom admires my writing, damn him.”
Virginia
#Woolf
on T.S. Eliot, 13 March 1921
1
32
100
Published today, Some Men In London: Queer Life.
Order now:
@classicpenguins
#somemeninlondon
17
24
99
“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”
Bertrand
#Russell
, died 2 February 1970
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38
94
“I have seen a thousand graves opened, and always perceived that whatever was gone, the teeth and hair remained of those who had died with them. Is not this odd? They go the very first things in youth and yet last the longest in the dust.”
Lord
#Byron
, died 19 April 1824
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27
96
“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read...”
James Baldwin, born 2 August 1924
0
8
94
The day has arrived.
With enormous thanks once again
@NamanMChaudhary
for making this video.
10
28
89
I shall be talking about my new book Some Men In London at
@blackwelloxford
on 6 June, 6-7 pm. Please spread the word!
1
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89
Final proofs of my forthcoming anthology over which the law casts a long shadow.
Coming out on 30 May by
@classicpenguins
.
Pre-order here
7
21
87
“Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain
On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me
Remembering again that I shall die
And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks
For washing me cleaner than I have been
Since I was born into this solitude.”
Edward Thomas, 7 January 1916
2
16
82
“Down the road someone is practising scales,
The notes like little fishes vanish with a wink of tails,
Man’s heart expands to tinker with his car
For this is Sunday morning, Fate’s great bazaar…”
Louis MacNeice, died 3 September 1963
#louismacneice
#poem
#SundayMorning
0
17
79
“Publishers always clamour for the books that no one has ever written, and turn a cold shoulder on them as soon as they're written.”
H.H. Munro (Saki), killed in action 14 November 1916
#saki
#publishers
1
18
78
“Your reviewer refers to me throughout as ‘Miss Waugh’. My Christian name, I know, is occasionally regarded by people of limited social experience as belonging exclusively to the other sex....”
Evelyn Waugh writes a letter of correction to the TLS, 17 May 1928
#evelynwaugh
#tls
7
13
78
“I cannot consider death as anything but a removing from one room to another.”
William Blake, died 12 August 1827
#williamblake
0
17
76
“It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time. A man knows it must be so, and submits. It will do him no good to whine.”
Samuel Johnson, died 13 December 1784
#drjohnson
#samulejohnson
2
15
70
“Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best. Genius must always have lapses proportionate to its triumphs.”
Max Beerbohm, died 20 May 1956
#maxbeerbohm
#genius
#mediocrity
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75
“Whenever people say, ‘We mustn't be sentimental’, you can take it they are about to do something cruel.”
Brigid
#Brophy
, d. 7 August 1995
1
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74
“Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when we were not: this gives us no concern. Why, then, should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be?”
W Hazlitt, died 18 September 1830
3
21
73
“He lived there in the unsayable lights.
He saw the fuchsia in a drizzling noon,
The elderflower at dusk like a risen moon
And green fields greying on the windswept heights.”
Seamus
#Heaney
, born 13 April 1939
1
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70
My forthcoming book, to be published in May, is featured in this week's
@spectator
#SomeMenInLondon
@classicpenguins
2
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72
“Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.”
George Eliot, born 22 November 1819
#georgeeliot
0
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71
Angus Wilson, whose fiction gave a voice to gay characters. An extract from his first novel, Hemlock and After’ (1952), is included in my book ‘Some Men in London: Queer Life 1945-1959’
4
11
69
“A little curly-headed, good-for-nothing,
And mischief-making monkey from his birth;
His parents ne’er agreed except in doting
Upon the most unquiet imp on earth…”
Lord
#Byron
, born 22 January 1788
1
17
66
“ ...the dead
Returning lightly dance:
Whatever the road bring
To me or take from me,
They keep me company
With their pattering,
Crowding the solitude
Of the loops over the downs,
Hushing the roar of towns
And their brief multitude.”
Edward Thomas, k.i.a. 9 April 1917
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19
66
“In real life, it is the hare who wins. Every time. Look around you. And in any case it is my contention that Aesop was writing for the tortoise market. Hares have no time to read. They are too busy winning the game.” Anita Brookner, died 10 March 2016
#anitabrookner
2
18
66
“Oh how I used to look forward to this magic day! Now that I have had sixty-nine of them my enthusiasm has faded. […] One year off seventy now! Just fancy. The snows of yesteryear are a bloody long way off.”
Noël Coward, 16 December 1968
#noelcoward
2
5
65
“All you have to do to educate a child is leave him alone and teach him to read. The rest is brainwashing.” Ellen Gilchrist, born 20 February 1935
#ellengilchrist
#reading
#books
1
18
65
“We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” New Year's resolution from E.M. Forster, born 1 January 1879
#emforster
#NewYearsResolution
#queerhero
2
14
64
“Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air.”
Herman Melville died, 28 September, 1891
1
34
62
“I don’t suffer much from solitude in the evenings. I spring upon my books. I always spoke a good word for solitude, and it is grateful to me. Books ward off the ghastly thoughts.”
Samuel Palmer, born 27 January 1805
#samuelpalmer
#books
#reading
#solitude
2
18
63
“Poetry should be great and unobtrusive... How beautiful are the retired flowers! – how would they lose their beauty were they to throng into the highway, crying out, ‘Admire me, I am a violet! Dote upon me, I am a primrose!’”
John
#Keats
, 3 February 1818
1
12
62
“I have come to the conclusion, after many years of sometimes sad experience, that you cannot come to any conclusion at all.”
Vita Sackville-West, born 9 March 1892
#vsackvillewest
#vita
3
11
62
“My imagination functions much better when I don’t have to speak to people.”
Patricia Highsmith, born 19 January 1921
#patriciahighsmith
1
8
62
“I am poor - obscure - just eighteen years of age - with a rapacious appetite for everything and principles as light as my purse.”
Katherine Mansfield, born 14 October 1888
#KatherineMansfield
0
17
60
“No, no, let us play, for it is yet day,
And we cannot go to sleep;
Besides, in the sky the little birds fly,
And the hills are all covered with sheep.”
William Blake, born 28 November 1757
#williamblake
#poem
2
19
58
“It is difficult to find a good vegetable garden […] the supermarkets have wiped them out. Once all these little cottages would have grown their own, before the road was constructed during the war. Now no-one does.”
Derek
#Jarman
, 26 February 1989
#vegetables
#supermarket
3
7
59
“Like all young men I set out to be a genius, but mercifully laughter intervened.”
Lawrence Durrell, born 27 February 1912
#lawrencedurrell
#writing
2
11
59
“It’s a shame that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day is work. He can’t eat for eight hours; he can’t drink for eight hours; he can’t make love for eight hours. The only thing a man can do for eight hours is work. ”
William
#Faulkner
, born 25 September 1897
4
18
60
“Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.”
William Hazlitt, died 18 September 1830
#williamhazlitt
1
12
57
“Silence will save me from being wrong (and foolish), but it will also deprive me of the possibility of being right.”
Igor
#Stravinsky
, died 6 April 1971
1
14
57
“When I was five the black dreams came;
Nothing after was quite the same.
Come back early or never come.
[...]
When I woke they did not care;
Nobody, nobody was there.
Come back early or never come.”
Louis MacNeice, born 12 September 1907
#louismacneice
#poem
#autiobiography
3
12
58
Shortlist for the TLS Ackerley Prize 2024 announced.
Monique Charlesworth’s ‘Mother Country’ (Moth Books)
Jeremy Seabrook’s ‘Private Worlds’ (
@plutopress
)
Catherine Taylor’s ‘The Stirrings’ (
@wnbooks
)
Congratulations to the three authors!
@Mo_Charlesworth
@KatyaTaylor
@TheTLS
6
8
57
“Now, whenever I despair, I no longer expect my end, but some bit of luck, some commonplace little miracle which, like a glittering link, will mend again the necklace of my days.”
Colette, born 28 January 1873
#Colette
1
17
55
“None saw their spirits’ shadow shake the grass,
Or stood aside for the half used life to pass
Out of those doomed nostrils and the doomed mouth,
When the swift iron burning bee
Drained the wild honey of their youth.”
Isaac
#Rosenberg
, killed in action 1 April 1918
#poem
2
14
55
“Thy extreme hope, the loveliest and the last,
The bloom, whose petals nipp’d before they blew
Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste;
The broken lily lies — the storm is overpast.”
P.B. Shelley on John Keats, who died 23 February 1821
#Romantics
#keats
2
14
55
“I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world’s eyes
As though they’d wrought it.
Song, let them take it,
For there’s more enterprise
In walking naked.”
W. B. Yeats, b. 13 6 1865
0
11
56
“What an odd thing a diary is: the things you omit are more important than those you put in.”
Simone de
#Beauvoir
, born 9 January 1908
1
15
55
“Stations attract all those who have no journey to take, they provide warmth, a roof in a sudden storm, and the illusion of being at the hub of things.”
Derek Jarman, 3 May 1989
#derekjarman
#railwaystations
0
11
54
“The bigotry of centuries has left a mass of dead wood, which honest people should now hack away and burn.” Derek Jarman, died 19 February 1994
#derekjarman
#homophobia
#lgbthistorymonth
0
11
56
“Great art is essentially lonely… The work that counts is more likely to be conceived in a rectory on the Yorkshire moors, or a cottage in the lake country than in the self-conscious atmosphere of literary circles.”
Forrest Reid, died 4 January 1947
#forrestreid
#literarylife
1
7
53
“Colour rinses are very good now and can be done yourself. They wash out if you don’t like them. If you try – remember to leave the front lighter than back. One grey or light lock is lovely.”
Jean
#Rhys
, 4 May 1959
2
7
53
“The books I have brought with me are a great consolation for the confinement - & I bought more as we came along – in short – I never consult the thermometer…”
Lord
#Byron
, holed up at Newstead Abbey in heavy snow, 22 January 1814
2
21
51
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
Oscar Wilde, born 16 October 1854
#oscarwilde
#LGBTQ
1
8
49
“I am tired tonight. My eyes are out of focus, my body droops under the weight of the day, but as I leave you Queer lads let me leave you singing.”
Derek Jarman, died 19 February 1994.
#derekjarman
#queerhistory
#AIDS
0
12
51
“But what has been will be —
First memory, then oblivion’s swallowing sea;
Like men foregone, shall we merge into those
Whose story no one knows.”
Thomas Hardy, died 11 January 1928
#thomashardy
#poem
#Death
1
17
50
“The effort of having to look more or less like one’s photographs is becoming such a strain.”
Ronald Firbank, died 21 May 1926
#ronaldfirbank
4
9
51
“For ignorance is the first requisite of the historian - ignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits, with a placid perfection that unattainable by the highest art.”
Lytton Strachey, born 1 March 1880
#lyttonstrachey
#bloomsbury
#historians
1
11
51
“Have you forgotten what we were like then
when we were still first rate
and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth
it’s no use worrying about Time
but we did have a few tricks up our sleeves
and turned some sharp corners”
Frank O’Hara, born 27 March 1926
#frankohara
#poem
5
4
51
“I saw the business of writing for what it truly was and is to me. It is your penance for not being lucky. It is an attempt to reach others and to make them love you.” Anita Brookner, died 10 March 2016
#anitabrookner
#writing
2
9
51
“The divine taxi-driver rang up, not wholly welcome: he said he had rung many times and is coming to tea on Tuesday. His name, alas, is Desmond.”
James Pope-Hennessy, 16 June 1950. More diary entires by him feature in my new book, 'Some Men in London'.
#somemeninlondon
1
1
51
“I made a posy, while the day ran by:
“Here will I smell my remnant out, and tie
My life within this band.”
But Time did beckon to the flowers, and they
By noon most cunningly did steal away,
And withered in my hand.”
George Herbert, born 3 April 1593
3
12
48
“A short life and a merry one, my buck!
We used to say we’d hate to live dead-old,—
Yet now ... I’d willingly be puffy, bald,
And patriotic.”
Wilfred Owen, killed in action 4 November 1918
#wilfredowen
#warpoetry
1
15
49
“Especially when the October wind
With frosty fingers punishes my hair,
Caught by the crabbing sun I walk on fire
And cast a shadow crab upon the land,
By the sea's side, hearing the noise of birds...”
Dylan Thomas, born 27 October 1914
#dylanthomas
#poem
0
12
47
“Our true occupation is to manufacture from the raw material of life the fabric of happiness; and if we are ever to set about our work we must make up our minds to risk something.”
A.E. Housman, born 26 March 1859
#aehousman
#ashropshirelad
#housmancountry
1
6
50
Join me tomorrow at 7 PM
@Foyles
when I’ll be discussing my new book Some Men In London with
#Diarmuidhester
Ticket link:
0
6
49
“What is the answer? In that case, what is the question?” Gertrude
#Stein
’s last words, 27 July 1946
0
11
49
“The reasons that drive me to write are many and the most important are the most secret, I think. Perhaps most of all this: to put something out of death’s reach.” André Gide born 22 November 1896
#andregide
#writing
#LGBT
3
11
49
“Always becoming, never arriving. Life is at a standstill - only ideas flash past. In such confusion I find myself running after them: Hey! Stop! Stop! But they escape, leaving me staring at a grey English spring.”
Derek Jarman born 31 January 1942
#derekjarman
1
15
47
“How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.”
W.H. Auden, born 21 February 1907
#WHAuden
#poem
#poetry
#lgbthistorymonth
0
15
49
“The only problem with reading fiction is that it doesn’t prepare us for the opacity of real life nor its tedium.” Edmund White, born 13 January 1940
#edmundwhite
#fiction
0
16
45
My article on the centenary of E.M. Forster's 'A Passage to India' in in this week's TLS.
This week’s
@TheTLS
, featuring
@PParkerWriting
on A Passage to India;
@cathompsn
on Cook’s final voyage;
@JulianBaggini
on the unknowable; James Hall on Michelangelo;
@ben_rog
on borders;
@BronwenEverill
on Africa in world history;
@AndrewEpstein3
on Emerson – and more
0
11
29
0
6
47
“Weeded the parsnips, and I must say they look as miserable as any other saved souls now we have done them.”
Sylvia Townsend Warner, 7 May 1934
#sylviatownsendwarner
2
16
45
“Good work and joyous play go hand in hand. When play stops, old age begins. Play keeps you from taking life too seriously.”
Lord Byron, born 22 January 1788
#byron
1
13
47
“I’m always being told that until my work ceases to be ‘sordid and depressing’ I haven’t much chance of selling.”
Jean Rhys, 23 June 1931
#jeanrhys
#womenwriters
1
8
47
“Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect, like a physician, who hath found out an infallible medicine, after the patient is dead.”
Jonathan Swift, b. 30 Nov 1667
2
14
45