The book itself is quite short and just about manages to not overstay its welcome; indeed, I found the majority of it propulsively readable. To come across such a lucid, compelling and tragic time capsule of working class gay life, so well preserved and perfunctoral of modern times, is really quite a marvel. year-old Leda – it’s the only name we know him by – is a social and sexual vagabond who begs and blags his way from day to day, living off friends, doing the very occasional casual job and drifting into bars and clubs. Seller has stated it will dispatch the item within 1 working day upon receipt of cleared payment - opens in a new window or tab . That's not to say the book isn't sophisticated because it contains some absolutely beautiful lines, vivid descriptions and thoughtful commentary.

Copies of Love, Leda by Mark Hyatt are exclusively available at Foyles for the first five weeks of the exhibition.Because their guilt and self-pity is a sickness inbred in them, draining them; so they have to numb themselves with hollow sexuality and the din of the jukebox; inflate their shallow little egos into seeing themselves as supreme men of tomorrow, which they’ll never be.

And then there is the incessant pining for Daniel, the heterosexual priest with whom he is in love, which is less a plot device than it is a symbolic marker for the social conditions of pre-1967 homosexuals in Britain. He slows down and rests on my back as he ejects the cloud of his body into rip-roaring blood, and rolls off me, leaving an exotic smell behind him.London itself is having an overhaul because the conditions of many foundations are not so good (but that’s carelessness) and the British love ugliness. But too many people and the neon lights cause useless thoughts and unconscious problems in endless negative patterns and I am a slave to this sick nonsense so say to myself: ‘Sit down, jump up or go for a run. I can’t bear to be frustrated within myself because frustration makes me feel neurotic and completely mad. But there's also a sadness to this as he's feeling so estranged from life: “I think I live without knowing myself and I laugh at the world to kill my pain.

Now it finally comes to us, resurrected by Peninsula Press, and offers us an invaluable glimpse into pre-legalisation gay life in 1960s London. His head goes under the pillow and pulls out a tube of lubrication, to reduce the friction and half of the pain. For much of the novel consists of rather mundane accounts of the protagonist's daily life, spent crashing with various acquaintances and scrounging out a living doing casual jobs; having meaningless sex with a plethora of both male and female hookups in sometimes graphic detail. A lot of the narrative is taken up by long passages where Leda merely pontificates on the meaning of life, coming out with quasi-philosophical lines such as ‘It’s hard for me to believe that I exist and at the same time to accept my delusions’.Why has instinct made today an eye-opener, my mind issuing facts through my body with the result that I obtain no satisfaction? I hand him a ten-shilling note, he knocks and the door opens, but it’s on a chain and one can see a man, two inches wide and five feet tall. The antidote to Leda’s dreary, sometimes chilling travels, which all seem to be directed at running into his unrequited love, is Hyatt’s sobering sense of reality: while it is not a feel-good story, it is a frank, if somewhat stark, exploration of the prejudices and challenges faced by gay men in the 60s and how, even in the midst of that, there are covert delights as Leda moves through London with the deft movements of a secret agent, undercover but in plain sight. It is beyond important for this kind of work to be carried out so that we can unravel more queer textualities and lives. Conscious that he’s probably experienced more in life than his own (estranged) father has, and more, ‘it’s no wonder I get bored with life from time to time.