DOUGLAS FIELD relishes the hard-boiled language, satire and humour of the third and last of the Harlem trilogy
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‘There is such a thing as ineradicable homosexuality’, Harry Whyte, letter to Stalin, 1934
MATTHEW HAWKINS treads warily through the symphonic history of a subject that our present understanding can only obscure
Detail from The Last Judgement, Michelangelo, 1541, from the upper righthand corner showing male couples embracing as they ascend to heaven
[Public Domain]
STEPHANIE BROWN draws attention to the hidden labour of the female embroiderers, and how a 19th century replica made no such error
MIK SABIERS revels in a band that ploughs an idiosyncratic furrow of expletive laden, guitar-driven alt rock
ANDY HEDGECOCK, MARIA DUARTE and ANGUS REID review Synthetic Sincerity, Our Hero, Balthazar, Heartstopper Forever, and A Year In London
The bard invites readers to a gig, raps for Clacton, and lays out the Burnham-Hurzeler conundrum
RON JACOBS recommends an important book that enhances the oppositional theories put forth by Fanon and, in doing so, remakes psychology itself
Forbidden Desire in Early Modern Europe, 1400 - 1750
Noel Malcolm
OUP, £25
THE lauded historian Noel Malcolm begins Forbidden Desire in Early Modern Europe by relating an account of how, in 1558, in the household of the Venetian embassy in Istanbul, two young male pages were repeatedly seen flirting and kissing. Other downstairs workers didn’t actually seem to mind, and some were diverted and amused. Those in charge were concerned enough to document and suppress the blandishment, as they didn’t want the household to be seen as resembling local Muslim equivalents, where convention condoned acts of sodomy – or was this just a smear?
Disquisition follows on a grand symphonic scale and the reader is launched into myriad calibrated thoughts. Why are men so strange? Where does recreation end and denigration begin? Is it illuminating or alienating to peer at carnality through a prism of historical and cultural shifts?
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