Director Peter Scott-Presland is the author of several books, which are available on this site with FREE POSTAGE within the UK. Delivery in the UK within 14 days.
The Campaign for Homosexual Equality was the major Queer campaigning organisation in the UK in the 1970s and 1980s. At its height it had over 150 groups all over the country, and over 6000 members. No town was without its CHE group as a social hub for homosexuals and an agent for change.
Despite being side-lined by the more radical and colourful Gay Liberation Front, its effective life lasted five times as long, and it had a far more lasting effect on the struggle for LGBT rights, through influencing subsequent generations of activists, Stonewall and the mainstream political parties. This history has been largely ignored.
Peter redresses the balance. In the first volume he charts how CHE rose out of the frozen wastes of the 1950s, a working-class movement which battled unsuccessfully to set up social clubs before turning to creating a network of local support and social groups. The story is full of larger-than-life characters, passionate commitment, painstaking campaigning against the odds and almost operatic feuds.
“Immensely detailed, engaged, passionate, scholarly, chatty, rumbustious and highly readable, embracing the reader with the excitement of new beginnings and the vicissitudes, pleasures and pains of many individual lives.” – Jeffery Weeks, author of Coming Out.
Price: £30 hardback within UK. (£40 for outside of UK)
A Gay Century is available as an e-book from Amazon, Apple Store and Google Books.
The 17 playlets which make up A Gay Century were premiered over Zoom during the pandemic lockdowns 2020-21.
They were presented as drama, without music, although designed to be made into mini operas with music by Robert Ely. So far, he has set 14 of the 17, and one of them, 1936: Fishing, had its operatic premiere in September 2022.
We now publish them in two volumes. A series of quirky snapshots of the lives lived by homosexuals throughout the 20th Century.
Volume 1: 1900-1963
Paperback 420pp
Price: £9.99 within UK. (£14.99 for delivery outside the UK)
Volume 2: 1973 – 2001
Paperback 420pp
Price: £11.99 within UK. (£16.99 for delivery outside the UK)