Freelance journalist and writer. Formerly
@FT
and LGBTQ+ editor of
@Openly
. All views my own. "The Diaries of Mr Lucas" published
@AtlanticBooks
, May 2, 2024.
PUBLICATION DAY!!!
The Diaries of Mr Lucas is out today!!
And it's already doing really rather well - particularly (woo hoo) the Kindle edition.
The first is Amazon's New Releases bestsellers; the second, LGBTQ+ Biography eBooks.
Holy hootin' heck!!!
Well, gosh. It is 30 years to the day since
@WillParry5
,
@ralphwilde
and I, backed by
@stonewalluk
, launched our European Court of Human Rights case against the British government over the gay male age of consent - then 21 to the straight 16.
Some fabulous news with which to start the week.
With vast thanks to
@jamespulford
, The Diaries of Mr Lucas, a tale of a lost queer London, will be published by
@AtlanticBooks
in May 2024.
But most thanks must go to my utterly fabulous agent
@EliArieh
!
LOOK what I’ve got my hands on 📘🏳️🌈
A treasure trove of forgotten history: this is gay London live you’ve never seen it before
The Diaries of Mr Lucas, Notes from a Lost Gay Life, by
@hugo_greenhalgh
(and Mr Lucas himself) is out May next year from
@AtlanticBooks
and
@WFHowes
Some fabulous news!
@BBCRadio4
has commissioned an hour-long documentary on The Diaries of Mr Lucas to be broadcast at the beginning of September as part of its Archive on 4 strand.
Hoooooooorah!!!!
Hoorah! One for your diary.
Do tune in to
@BBCRadio4
this coming Saturday at 8pm to
@Markgatiss
presenting an excellent Archive on 4 documentary on the life of Mr Lucas, a gay man in the 1950-60s.
Lots of sex - and the Kray Twins. What's not to like?
Love this gleeful/joyous genderfluid me aged about 21. I’ve often wondered if I’d been born 20 or so years later (pic is from about 1994) whether I’d identify as non-binary…and the answer is almost certainly yes.
So why not now? That one I can’t answer - it’s a work in progress
"Time and again he was battered, robbed and blackmailed by those he treated generously. His desire for affection simply brought him further affliction."
Wow!! The
@thetimes
has reviewed The Diaries of Mr Lucas.
And it's completely and utterly lovely!
Hugely honoured to be nominated for the 2022
#GLAADawards
in the Outstanding Online Journalism Article category for my piece looking at the plight of LGBT+ Afghans 100 days after the fall of Kabul in August last year:
"My boyfriend is now in a refugee camp in Qatar...it makes me realise that I will never meet him again in person."
Incredibly moving and powerful diary from a gay man trapped in Kabul under the Taliban.
@Openly
@TRF_Stories
We launched
@openly
18 months ago aimed at covering under-reported LGBT+ stories around the world. One award so far under our belt, and this year we are currently shortlisted for the
@EuroPressPrize
,
@amnesty
,
@onewm
and
@glaad
media awards
Extremely proud of an incredible team.
Sorry, this is utterly gratuitous, but here goes….
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ME!!!
Please help make my birthday the bestest, superduperest day ever by pre-ordering my book!
The Diaries of Mr Lucas: Notes from a Lost Gay Life
(Sorry!! Did say it was gratuitous..)
Oh sigh/sob sob sob - goodbye Mishka. Aged 21, you have outlived many and most cats.
But your death (gah!) also represents the end of the cat gang (everybody always should have four cats).
So farewell Mishka, Stryker, Fang and Plum.
I love you all and miss you all like crazy
Yay! Lovely but lovely to see The Diaries of Mr Lucas forming part of
@QueerBritain
’s incredibly excellent first exhibition.
Do go and see it (and the diaries, but of course) just off Granary Square in London’s Kings Cross.
Hoorah!!!
And lawks. Thanks Facebook for resurfacing this one from - gah! - 30 years ago and either from the Guardian or Telegraph as they(bless) ran the same photo on the same day
Me aged 20 looking moodily into the middle distance in a fit of pique at the lack of an equal age of consent
In 1993,
@WillParry5
,
@ralphwilde
and I took the British government to the European Court of Human Rights over the gay male age of consent - then 21 to the straight 16.
Here more about the case in
@TRF_Stories
and
@Openly
's fabulous Instagram story here:
Thank you to a friend for pointing out that myself and
@WillParry5
are in a BBC Storyville documentary about the history of LGBTQ+ rights in the 20th century.
Here I am being (just a little) shouty about the age of consent in Trafalgar Square in 1993/94 when I was 19/20
EXCLUSIVE-Hungary could be sanctioned over anti-LGBT+ law
"Collectively in Europe we're still underestimating just how much using LGBTI as 'others' is still such a politically profitable thing across the region”
@EvelyneParadis
@ILGAEurope
If anyone has any LGBTQ+ contacts/friends in Ukraine, particularly Lviv, please DM me.
Looking to write about the appalling situation in the country from an LGBTQ+/human rights perspective.
Many thanks in advance.
@Openly
@TRF_Stories
"a kaleidoscopic portrait of postwar queer life"
Gosh!! Another lovely review of The Diaries of Mr Lucas - this time in the
@guardian
.
Lovely to see on - wow!! - the eve of publication!
Our campaign ended a year later with a classic British fudge: parliament opting for 18 rather than equality at 16.
But two much braver young men picked up the baton and took us all to equality: take a bow Chris Morris and
@EuanSutherland
.
And just made it to
#Kyiv
- what an incredible city - as is the view from my hotel room balcony (the induced feelings of vertigo, not so much…).
More to follow tomorrow when I recover from the eight-hour drive….
"Mary Read and Anne Bonny were two of the most famed pirates in the 18th century yet there is little said about them in our history books. They broke gender boundaries and stunned people at the time"
@KateWilliamsme
Reading University
@Openly
@TRF_Stories
Oh thank the lord!! Mishka - aged 21 and a half - is coming home from the vet.
He wasn’t well at all this morning and I pretty much thought that was it.
But no and my god, hoorah!!!
The cat what never dies lives again to see another day.
My god, I’m happy/relieved.
EXCLUSIVE: EU could impose funding restrictions on Hungary over its ban on LGBT+ content from schools
"If you don't uphold the values of democracy or equality of the European Union, you are not entitled to take money for your project" -
@helenadalli
Hugely honoured to be a very small part of this incredible list of people. Many thanks to
@rachelmsavage
and the rest of the
@Openly
team
@TRF_Stories
with whom I very much share this honour thanks to their incredible work.
Gosh! It has been a year already since the kittens first arrived….many more years of kittens, please (and am totally planning to get two more at some stage very soon…).
Fab turnout this afternoon for my talk on LGBT+ rights at my former sixth-form college (where I was gay officer in 1990)- and whether we need to worry about whether they are going backwards (yes, we do). Huge thanks to
@ExeterCollege
for inviting me down.
@Openly
Fantastic to get out of London for the day and accompany the UK’s first LGBT Business Champion
@iain_w_anderson
talking to local LGBT+ business leaders in Gateshead and the northeast. The
@PrideCentre
- studios, radio station, local enterprises - is incredible!
"If kids can't see themselves represented then that's really limiting in terms of what they could achieve in their lifetimes"
@GoCharlieM
on her attempt to become the first trans racing driver to compete at Le Mans.
@racingprideuk
@RichardMRacing
Oh go on then...me at 20 staring moodily into the middle distance in a fit of pique over the then age of consent (in Jan 1994, it was 21 for gay men...and the article in the
@Telegraph
was written by someone called
@stephenfry
- whatever happened to him, eh...?).
Come and join us here
@TRF_Stories
!
We're looking for an outstanding journalist to become deputy editor of
@Openly
, covering all aspects of LGBTQ+ news globally via text, video and social media, including TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Insta - tell us more!
In Copenhagen for
@CPH2021
and even the boats are decked out in the rainbow flag.
More to follow on Instagram and Twitter soon - and a report from the scaled down march tomorrow on
@Openly
...
@dawnfrenchfans
comes out in support:
"If the government is to be believed and most of you gay men between the ages of 16 and 21 don't know about your sexuality yet and are undecided, I am available for shagging practice to help you make your minds up..."
"Our dream has come true. We are so happy to have received an official seal on our relationship," Angyal said after the ceremony, holding hands with her new wife.
She kissed her and said: "I love you."
"I love you back," Csillag said.
Oh sigh.
From five years ago - and only one (sob sob) is left: Mishka, the utterly gorgeous tabby.
Never ever have four cats: they will rip your heart out one by one as they die.
Always, but always have four cats: the best decision I have ever made.
Oh cat gang, I miss you.
“One of the most incredibly affecting hours of radio I’ve ever experienced…”
Wow!! Vast thanks to
@BBCRadio4
’s Pick of the Week for including Mr Lucas’s Diaries in this Sunday’s programme.
Oh thank the lord.
Mishka, now aged 21 and a half (102 in non-cat years), is getting fatter/better after about a month of pretty much not eating.
I think the extreme heat over the summer whacked poor puss sideways.
I’m now happily convinced he will never ever die.
The Diaries of Mr Lucas is a brilliant record of gay life in London before and after the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1967.
A usually clothed civil servant, Mr Lucas diarised his criminal sexual exploits, captured brilliantly by
@hugo_greenhalgh
.
In 1991, aged 17, I went to the Soviet Union - in its last dying days - on a two-week language course.
I'd embarked on a one-year GSCE the year before and then was faced with a one-year A-level and a bugger-broke 6th-form college that could only afford two hours a week tuition
EXCLUSIVE: Very powerful piece by
@rachelmsavage
for
@openly
detailing the fears and worries of gay men living in Kabul now under Taliban rule.
"They are now telling the world, 'We will not harm anyone, we will not kill anyone.' But they are just lying"
Help!
I'm writing a book about male prostitution in the 1960s and would love to talk to anyone who was part of London's 'Dilly scene at that time - or later.
The book is based on the diaries of a gay man, Mr Lucas, who was, erm, active at the time:
Very honoured to be working with the incredible team
@ILGAWORLD
to give a platform to young queer voices around the world.
@Openly
was founded in 2018 to cover
#LGBTQ
+ stories and it's incredibly important to hear from those who aren't normally seen in the media.
We are thrilled to announce that our friends at
@Openly
will publish a series of Op-Eds authored by participants of The Queer Youth Dialogues this spring. These articles will give LGBTIQ+ youth a global platform to share their stories and bring attention to issues in their region
Love this! I first went to
@gaystheword
in 1986/7 when, on a trip to London with my mum, I snuck off for an hour aged about 14 and plucked up the courage to go in.
And yes, knowing there were others like me out there did change my life
@Openly
#TikTok
Gosh….a photograph of me I actually like (for the first time, I think, ever….ahem).
Hugely privileged and grateful to have been photographed by
@ThomasKnights
for the Pride 50 exhibition currently on show at the
@redhot100
gallery in Soho.
Photo:
@WillParry5
(in photo 2)
Very honoured to be asked to speak at the
@ExeterCollege
Academic Awards tonight.
My former sixth-form college, it was the making of me: aged 16/17 and the gay officer in 1989-90 with Katy Lawrence as the lesbian officer.
It was the start of my
#LGBTQ
+ activism (and pouting).
I can't find a photo from that day, so the one above is of me looking distinctly arrestable from the campaign c1993... (
@stonewalluk
- do you have the one from the launch - with
@IanMcKellen
speaking and the three of us looking terrified?).
A treasure trove of forgotten history: this is gay London like you’ve never seen it before
'I absolutely love this book'
@mcashmanCBE
Discover
#TheDiariesOfMrLucas
@hugo_greenhalgh
from 2nd May.
Bookshop: …
Waterstones:
Although much has changed, we feel that some things should remain the same. Resilience, a vital quality of journalism, is one of them. We are proud to announce our 2020
#EuropeanPressPrize
shortlist, celebrating the best of European journalism ✨
It's another shameless book plug post
So me at 15, me at 29, me at 24 and me at 40
In all of those iterations I dreamt of one day writing a book
And - cor bloody 'ell - I did it. And it's being published on Thursday: The Diaries of Mr Lucas
Hoorah!!!
"It will not be possible (for LGBTQ+ people) to stay, especially if it is a long occupation" - Olena Shevchenko at Insight Ukraine.
LGBTQ+ people in Ukraine warn how queer rights could go backwards in the face of Russia's invasion.
@Openly
@TRF_Stories
"Greenhalgh also tells the blackly comic story of his own relationship with Mr Lucas, and adds in related material about his experiences as a gay man himself. The result is an absorbing, illuminating, highly entertaining and often very funny book"
Wow!
Gosh, 27 years ago we marched in NYC for Stonewall 25 (and yes, having recently marched for Stonewall 50 I am aware of just how sodding old I am).
But sod it, this is still a fabulous photo of
@cerihutton
,
@WillParry5
,
@SebastianSandys
and then
@stonewalluk
CEO Angela Mason.
"It's important to realise that there are some countries where human rights issues are a real concern, where they are going backwards" -
@nickherbertcbe
, Britain's first Special Envoy on LGBT Rights, speaks exclusively with
@Openly
Hello again from Kyiv - lots of meetings/interviews today, in between negotiating a billion roadblocks/streets shut down for the visit by
@potus
.
But most striking - and poignant - were the memorials to those lives lost since the Russian invasion last year.
Incredibly moving.
We are thrilled to share that The Diaries of Mr Lucas by
@hugo_greenhalgh
and Choice by Neel Mukherjee are selected in
@GuardianBooks
list of books to look out for in 2024!
Oh sigh….this is rather poignant.
Mishka, who died recently at the fabulous age of 21 and a half, as a baby kitten back in 2001 (accompanied by Petroshka, who moved out in a fit of pique after another of my cats gave birth to a billion kittens…)
Oh Mishka, you are much missed
The absolute and utter terror of letting the kittens (now aged six months and spayed and microchipped - but am waiting for GPS collars to arrive) out of the flat
Door has been pretty much open all day and they’ve roamed (eeek!) and come back.
Think is time to let them run free
Off to New York this afternoon for
#Stonewall50
on a chartered flight stuffed full of journos and celebs (oh this job is hard sometimes). Just prepping for first interview with the spectacularly talented
@Tituss_Burgess
@openly
@trf_stories
But - sigh - to finish, we lost the vote that night. MPs rejecting 16 by a majority of 27, voting instead by 427 to 162 to reduce the age of consent to 18.
It would take seven more years to achieve equality...
The
#GLAADawards
for Outstanding Online Journalism Article goes to...
“Gay Men Speak Out After Being Turned Away from Donating Blood During Coronavirus Pandemic: 'We are Turning Away Perfectly Healthy Donors'”
@THETonyMorrison
@MrJoelLyons
@GMA
Looking for cover photos for my - yayayay! - upcoming book about Mr Lucas, the diarist with the mostest (guardsmen).
And, for some reason, I am - ineluctably, of course - drawn to this one…
@BenInLDN
@gaystarnews
So sorry to hear this.
@gaystarnews
was one of the best LGBT+ outlets going - and we here
@openly
were proud to work alongside some extremely talented journalists. Bad news for the entire industry.
"The extracts are sometimes shocking (the verbal abuse from Lucas's parents is particularly cruel), sometimes raw, but, for the main part, incredibly poetic."
Vast thanks to Jane Anderson
@RadioTimes
for a fabulous preview of this Saturday's
@BBCRadio4
doc on Mr Lucas's Diaries.
@Openly
will be reporting live all next week from Kyiv to mark the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion.
12 months on, how have
#LGBTQ
+ lives been impacted?
Openly’s editor is in Ukraine en route to Kyiv (hence the photos not being great…) and more reports to follow.
Quite simply one of the most singularly impressive people I’ve ever met - a ‘mad scientist’ with a mission to improve the world (one algorithm at a time)
@Openly
@neuraltheory
@TRF_Stories
Hugely chuffed to be shortlisted with
@nicolamilne123
and Jeong-One Park as part of the
@Openly
team in the Digital Innovation category for the Amnesty Media Awards 2020 for our Stonewall 50: Where next for LGBTQ+ lives? multi-media package.