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HEROES AND EXILES
Gay Icons Through the Ages

Tom Ambrose 

Published: 15 February 2009, Price: £9.99 pb

 Society has come a long way since the days of Oscar Wilde’s imprisonment, Harvey Milk’s campaign and even Section 28. This year alone we have seen the 20th anniversary of Stonewall, Gordon Brown put forward plans to allow civil partnership ceremonies to be held at the Houses of Parliament and Barack Obama affirm his campaign pledge to end the ban on homosexuals and lesbians serving openly in the US military. However, while it feels like we are entering a new world of equality, the battle is far from won. Recent figures from Scotland Yard revealed that the number of reported homophobic crimes in London has increased by nearly a fifth over the past year, homosexuality is still barbarically punished in many extremist Muslim nations and as Barack Obama said, there are ‘still many laws to change’ and ‘many hearts to open’. 

Published in time for Lesbian Gay Bisexual Trans History Month, Heroes and Exiles looks at the humancost of the struggle for equality by looking at the fascinating lives of some of the most eminent homosexual men and women in history. 

Demonised by the Church throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, homosexuals often became the scapegoats of a misguided society. From Henry James to the Ladies of Llangollen, author Tom Ambrose chronicles the tragic exiles and triumphant lovers throughout history, asking if we have finally realised that sexual orientation is as irrelevant to character and achievement as gender and skin colour and if the long exile has ended. 

Tom Ambrose will be speaking about the book at Gay’s the Word bookshop in Bloomsbury, London as a part of Lesbian Gay Bisexual Trans History Month. For more information on this event, please email contact Gay’s the Word on +44-020-7278 7654 or email angela@nhpub.co.uk.

 The Author

Tom Ambrose read history at Trinity College Dublin and gained a postgraduate degree at University College London. His recent books include The Nature of Despotism: From Caligula to Mugabe, the Making of Tyrants (2008), Godfather of the Revolution (2008), the first English biography of Philippe Égalité, Duke of Orléans and Prinny and His Pals (2009), a re-evaluation of the character of George IV through his many friendships with artists, writers and politicians.

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