It’s the same the whole world over

One has to ask the question: is this, intrinsically, an interesting subject? Personally, I would say not. Homosexual-ity, fairly clearly, is a genetic or innate human variation, comparable to left-handedness and probably occurring, like left-handedness, in about 5-10 per cent of humanity. That is, rationally speaking, about the limit of its intellectual interest: and who on earth, even left-handed people, would read a history of left-handedness?

Of course, for various other reasons, homosexuality does acquire a sort of social history, because it was rarely allowed to rest as simply a biological variation, but was turned into a sin, a disease or a crime by society at large. Now that nobody much cares any longer, or nobody that one would want to have dinner with, I admit that the whole subject is pleasantly sinking into the complete dullness it surely deserves.

It must be confessed that, since I fell into the habit of bringing my boyfriend along to book launches, where he proves a great favourite with publicity ladies, publishers have long thought that I would be absolutely fascinated to read a novel about homosexuality, or a history of homosexuality, and I am generally too polite to disenchant them.