A professional comedian’s desolate vision of hell

A professional comedian’s desolate vision of hell

Since homosexuals were ‘liberated’ in 1967, formed a lobby (some would say the most powerful in the country) and became publicly aggressive and demanding, they have forfeited our sympathy. But it is well to remember the sadness of their lives. Tom Stoppard has drawn attention to newly discovered letters by A.E. Housman, one in particular showing that he was for many years deeply in love with a man who led a normal married life with children and was probably wholly unaware of the profundity and lifelong duration of Housman’s affection. Here indeed was a love that dared not speak its name. The letter in which Housman revealed his obsessive love is characteristically succinct, reporting the death of the loved one in a Canadian hospital, and adding, ‘Now I can tell myself I could not have borne to leave him behind me in a world where anything might happen to him.’