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Paul Burston
- Apr 16
- 4 min
Lockdown Bookclub – Valley of the Dolls
In the ’60s, her name was synonymous with all things hip and swinging. Her fashion sense was imitated by millions. And on the day Preside
A former actress and model who favoured Pucci stretch tops, enormous black wigs and false eyelashes, Susann turned to writing in a desperate bid for fame. Diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 44, she wrote in her diary on Christmas Day 1962: “I can’t die without leaving something. Something big. I think I can write. Let me live to ma
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Paul Burston
- Apr 15
- 3 min
Lockdown Bookclub – Tennessee Williams, Memoirs
When Tennessee Williams’s memoirs were first published in 1975, one reviewer wrote: ‘If he has not exactly opened his heart, he has opene
And if his gay characters are a little troubling, that’s probably because their creator was himself a little troubled. ‘What is straight?’ he once asked. ‘A line can be straight, or a street. But the human heart? Oh, no, it’s curved like a road through mountains.’ As his memoirs make clear, Williams had a great appetite for life. Nobody was
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Paul Burston
- Apr 14
- 2 min
Lockdown Bookclub – Erotic Lives of the Superheroes
These are queer times for superheroes. Last October, Batwoman came out as the first crime-fighting lesbian to front her own TV show. Seve
.. ‘Batman and Robin Forever’ could have been the working title of Marco Mancassola’s literary take on the genre. In Erotic Lives of the Superheroes, Batman and Robin are a celebrity gay couple living together in New York. But the spark has gone. The Boy Wonder is no longer a boy, having ‘committed the unforgivable sin of growing older.’ So
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Paul Burston
- Apr 13
- 2 min
Lockdown Bookclub – A Place Called Winter
My last post about EM Forster and Maurice got me thinking about another much-loved, more recent read. Published in 2015 and shortlisted f
Shortly afterwards, we meet Harry Cane as a younger man – orphaned but comfortably off, with a nervous disposition and a speech impediment. His closest companion is his younger brother, though the two aren’t remotely alike. For gregarious Jack, life is one big boy’s own adventure. For stammering Harry, it’s a minefield of potential embarr
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Paul Burston
- Apr 9
- 4 min
Lockdown Bookclub – Ziggyology
‘I never thought I’d need so many people’ - Five Years I’m writing this during the third week of lockdown and the fourth week since we de
‘It is difficult to find a bright moment in 1972,’ the historian Christopher Lee wrote in This Sceptred Isle. History tells us that it was a year of mass unemployment, strikes, blackouts and the declaration of a state of emergency. A bit like the year we’re living through now. Still, Lee was wrong. There was a bright moment in 1972. It was
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