Bad Gays: A Homosexual History

Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller’s book is an unconventional history of homosexuality. Bad Gays is a passionate argument for rethinking gay politics beyond questions of identity and the search for solidarity across boundaries.

We all remember Oscar Wilde, but who speaks for Bosie? What about those 'bad gays' whose un-exemplary lives reveal more than we might expect? Too many popular histories seek to establish heroes, pioneers and martyrs but, as the authors argue, the past is filled with queer people whose sexualities and dastardly deeds have been overlooked.

Based on the hugely popular podcast series, Bad Gays subverts the notion of gay icons and queer heroes and asks what we can learn about LGBTQ+ history, sexuality and identity through its villains and baddies. From the Emperor Hadrian to anthropologist Margaret Mead and notorious gangster Ronnie Kray, the authors excavate the buried history of queer lives. This includes kings, fascist thugs such as Nazi founder Ernst Rohm, artists, and debauched bon viveurs.

Together these amazing life stories expand and challenge the mainstream assumptions of sexual identity. They show that homosexuality itself was an idea that emerged in the nineteenth century and that its interpretation has been central to major historical moments of conflict, from the ruptures of Weimar Republic to red-baiting in Cold War America.

Huw Lemmey is a novelist, artist and critic living in Barcelona. He is the author of three novels: Unknown Language, Red Tory, and Chubz. He has written for the Guardian, Frieze, Flash Art, Tribune, The Architectural Review, Art Monthly, New Humanist, the White Review, and L’Uomo Vogue, amongst others. As an artist and filmmaker his work has been shown at the ICA, Lux Biennial of Moving Image, Mumok Vienna, Warsaw Museum of Contemporary Art and the Design Museum, London.

Ben Miller is a writer and researcher living in Berlin where he has just begun a Doctoral Fellowship at the Graduate School of Global Intellectual History at the Freie Universität Berlin. He has taught on queer history, literature, and visual cultures at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin and The New Centre for Research & Practice. He has written for New York Times, Slate, Literary Hub, the Los Angeles Review of Books and Jacobin. His fiction has been published in SAND, Apogee Journal and Tin House. He is the author of The New Queer Photography.

• Dimensions 24.2 x 16.2 x 3.1 cm
• Material Responsibly sourced paper
• ISBN 9781839763274