A young soldier returning from the trenches of the First World War recollects a love that dare not speak its name. Almost one hundred years later, a groom-to-be prepares for his gay wedding.

Queers celebrates a century of evolving social attitudes and political milestones in British gay history, as seen through the eyes of eight individuals.

Poignant and personal, funny, tragic and riotous, these eight monologues for male and female performers cover major events - such as the Wolfenden Report of 1957, the HIV/AIDS crisis, and the debate over the age of consent - through deeply affecting and personal rites-of-passage stories.

Curated by Mark Gatiss, the monologues were commissioned to mark the anniversary of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act, which decriminalised homosexual acts in private between two men over the age of twenty-one. They were broadcast on BBC Four in 2017, directed and produced by Gatiss, and starring Alan Cumming, Rebecca Front, Ian Gelder, Kadiff Kirwan, Russell Tovey, Gemma Whelan, Ben Whishaw and Fionn Whitehead. They were also staged at The Old Vic in London.

This volume includes:

• The Man on the Platform by Mark Gatiss
• The Perfect Gentleman by Jackie Clune
• Safest Spot in Town by Keith Jarrett
• Missing Alice by Jon Bradfield
• I Miss the War by Matthew Baldwin
• More Anger by Brian Fillis
• A Grand Day Out by Michael Dennis
• Something Borrowed by Gareth McLean

About the Author
Mark Gatiss is an actor, writer and producer. He first found success with The League of Gentlemen, with whom he won the Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1997, and went on to enjoy a radio series and three TV series on the BBC and big-screen outing in 2005. He has written nine episodes of Doctor Who since its return to television in 2005 and has appeared in the show twice. He is perhaps best known as the co-creator and co-writer of the award-winning global phenomenon Sherlock in which he also plays Mycroft Holmes. Other notable television credits include London Spy, Wolf Hall, Coalition, Mapp and Lucia, The Crimson Petal and the White, Nighty, Night, The Wind and the Willows and Sense and Sensibility. Film credits include The Knot, Denial, Absolutely Fabulous, Dad's Army, Our Kind of Traitor, Bright Young Things and Starter for Ten. Theatre credits include Coriolanus, The Recruiting Officer, The Vote (Donmar Warehouse), All About My Mother (The Old Vic), Season's Greetings (National Theatre), 55 Days (Hampstead), and Three Days in the Country (National Theatre), for which he won an Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Reviews

'Sits triumphantly in the tradition of Alan Bennett's Talking Heads: funny, poignant and closely observed'

* The Times *

'An unbeatable series of monologues - funny, filthy, mournful, celebratory, predatory, bathetic, heroic - of the travails and, yes, fun had in the days before this particular love could speak its name'

* Guardian *



Book Information
ISBN 9781848426962
Format Paperback
Page Count 96
Imprint Nick Hern Books
Publisher Nick Hern Books