More Mr Pooter than Joe Orton: George Lucas’s gay life in London

In January 1948, George Lucas, an unremarkable 21-year-old Roman Catholic who had just been demobbed from the Pay Corps, was living unhappily in Romford with his ill-matched parents, who relentlessly taunted him about his homosexuality. He would shortly get a job at the War Office and so embark on a lifetime’s career as a civil servant, commuting to central London every day to work at his desk and spend his evenings in search of sex and companionship, largely among the servicemen who hung around Marble Arch. In later life Lucas would trawl the pubs, streets and urinals of central London, more often than not paying for sex, and always keeping a detailed account of his exploits and expenses in his diaries.

When Lucas died in 2014 he left the diaries to Hugo Greenhalgh, who had first met him while working on a documentary about rent boys and their clients. The 56 volumes that survive cover the years 1948 to 2009, providing a daily record of Lucas’s life and opinions, amounting to some ten million words set down in his small, neat handwriting.