Closet Queens

In Closet Queens, masterful biographer Michael Bloch turns his attention to the men of British politics who were forced to lead double lives. Outwardly conforming to the requirements of heterosexual middle class society, many twentieth-century British politicians had illicit, clandestine and often thrilling queer sex lives. Some sought relationships with men of their own class, others with 'rough trade' and some confined themselves to fleeting, anonymous encounters in public places. After the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 decriminalised sexual acts in private between consenting males, the great fear of closet queens was not of prosecution in the courts but exposure in the press, leading some men to continue to repress their sexuality in order to realise their ambitions. Opening doors into the private, hidden worlds of key political figures in Britain, Closet Queens is an astonishing work that will be one of the talking points of 2015.