A new book

No Modernism Without Lesbians is the definite title of my next book. 2 April 2020 is the publication date, Head of Zeus the publisher. The jacket has been approved and passed and I must learn to love it as much as others say they do. There was lots of interest in the book at the Frankfurt Book Fair, so Georgina, my agent, says. Photographs are being researched – there is an allocation of 40 – and the manuscript is with the copy editor who I hope will not have a comma fetish. I share Gertrude Stein’s disdain for commas question marks and exclamation marks. I suppose house style will put me in my place. [ Read more on the News page ]

Memoir

Decisions to be made about this. My agent thinks it could be a book. If I got a commission that would be some money up front to write it in a concentrated way. So I’ll put in a proposal. If no publisher wants it I’ll go back to the website idea of postings as and when. [ Read more ]

I began writing books about lesbians in the 1980s. I have twice won the US Lambda Literary Award for best gay writing. In 2014 in the UK I was named a Rainbow List National Treasure in the Lifetime Achievement category… Two of my books, The Trials of Radclyffe Hall and Coconut Chaos, have been broadcast as BBC Radio 4’s ‘Book of the Week’. The Radclyffe Hall book was also shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Mrs Keppel and Her Daughter was a New York Times ‘Notable Book of the Year’ and featured on BBC 4’s ‘A Good Read’. My first book Gluck: Her Biography was recently the basis for a BBC documentary and an exhibition at the Brighton Art Gallery. Among other titles Selkirk’s Island won the Whitbread biography award, Edith Cavell won East Anglia Book of the Year and Murder at Wrotham Hill was shortlisted for a Crime Writers Golden Dagger Award.

Gwendolen
Murder at Wrotham Hill
Edith Cavell
Coconut Chaos
Natalie and Romaine
Selkirk’s Island
The Trials of Radclyffe Hall
Mrs Keppel and Her Daughter
Greta and Cecil
Bakst: The Rothschild Panels of The Sleeping Beauty
Gertrude and Alice
Gluck
A Woman’s Place

I have also written plays for radio and stage. Strip Show, a series of monologues by women, was performed at the Edinburgh Festival and at the King’s Head in Islington. Among my radio plays Prunella Scales starred in What a Saga and Patricia Routledge in A Horse Called Gertrude Stein.