Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

  • Nothing Ever Just Disappears

  • Seven Hidden Histories
  • By: Diarmuid Hester
  • Narrated by: Diarmuid Hester
  • Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
  • 5.0 out of 5 stars (5 ratings)

Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.
Nothing Ever Just Disappears cover art

Nothing Ever Just Disappears

By: Diarmuid Hester
Narrated by: Diarmuid Hester
Try for £0.00

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £13.00

Buy Now for £13.00

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Listeners also enjoyed...

Homer Box Set: Iliad & Odyssey cover art
The Heart cover art
The Whale Tattoo cover art
The Whiskey of Our Discontent cover art
Horizontal Vertigo cover art
Eat Your Mind cover art
Afropean cover art
Recollections of My Non-Existence cover art
Shaking a Leg cover art
Fierce Poise cover art

Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

Nothing Ever Just Disappears retraces the footsteps of some of the twentieth century's most remarkable queer writers and artists. Moving through their homes and haunts, it explores the deep connections between where they lived, who they were and the iconoclastic art and literature they created.

In search of a new history of queer culture, Diarmuid Hester travels from Cambridge's ancient cloisters to the smoky clubs of Jazz Age Paris, through the bunkers of Nazi-occupied Jersey to the newly liberated gaybourhoods of New York and beyond. Authoritative and not a little irreverent, Hester brings to life the bars and basements, homes and studios, cities and landscapes that shaped the sexual identities of such extraordinary figures as E. M. Forster, Josephine Baker, James Baldwin and Derek Jarman.

A provocative argument for the centrality of space to any consideration of queer history, culture and politics, the book also attests to all that is lost when queer spaces are forgotten. Nothing Ever Just Disappears is the first trade book from an astonishing writer and thinker.

Featuring Derek Jarman, E. M. Forster, London's queer suffragettes, Josephine Baker, Claude Cahun, James Baldwin, Jack Smith and Kevin Killian.

©2023 Diarmuid Hester (P)2023 Penguin Audio
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: LGBTQ+

Critic reviews

'An exploration, celebration and reclamation of queer lives within their spaces and landscapes, it roams from the cloisters and locked gates of Cambridge to the hilly streets of San Francisco, the apartments of New York City and the nuclear desert of Dungeness's shingle-shore, where Derek Jarman created a world on the margins and of the margins.' (Robert MacFarlane)

'A moving, erudite book... Hester takes us on a journey through time, over land and sea, and casts an empathetic and sharply humorous eye on this pantheon of queer figures. A hymn to the importance of community and place, this is a vital public history of queer life that is both intimate and wondrously radical.' (Seán Hewitt, author of All Down Darkness Wide)

'Hester's book is insightful, delightful, and enlightening: an essential entrant into the queer canon.' (Isabel Waidner)

What listeners say about Nothing Ever Just Disappears

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    5
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    5
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    5
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Extraordinary histories and narration

A must listen — Hester’s narration is evocative and Transportive and the histories he recounts are endlessly fascinating

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!