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Bad Gays

A Homosexual History

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Bad Gays

By: Ben Miller, Huw Lemmey
Narrated by: Ben Allen
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About this listen

Too many popular histories seek to establish heroes, pioneers and martyrs but as Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller argue, the past is filled with queer people whose sexualities and/or dastardly deeds have been overlooked. We all remember Oscar Wilde, but who speaks for Bosie? What about those 'bad gays' whose un-exemplary lives reveals more than we might expect?

Part-revisionist history, part-historical biography and based on the hugely popular podcast series, Bad Gays subverts the notion of gay icons and queer heroes and asks what we can learn about LGBTQ history, sexuality and identity through its villains and baddies.

From the Emperor Hadrian to notorious gangster Ronnie Kray, the authors excavate the buried history of queer lives. This includes fascist thugs, famous artists, austere puritans and debauched bon viveurs, Imperialists, G-men and architects. Together these amazing life stories expand and challenge the mainstream assumptions of sexual identity.

Amusing, disturbing and fascinating, Bad Gays puts centre stage the queers villains and evil twinks in history.

©2022 Huw Lemmey & Ben Miller (P)2022 W F Howes Human Sexuality LGBTQ+ Studies Psychology Psychology & Mental Health Social Sciences LGBTQIA+ Socialism
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I enjoyed the accounts of a mix of familiar and totally unknown characters from throughout history, and the conclusions drawn are thought-provoking. However, as noted by another reviewer, the recording has not been edited properly: there are repetitions, jumps, and alternative phrases left in.

Interesting but needs re-editing

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A fascinating look at queer history, that taught me a lot about different areas of the world and different people. It definitely makes me interested to listen to their podcast as well.

While the content was great the audio cohesion was not. At several points there are bits repeated, at one point more than 3 times for the same four or five words. At other points there are 'alternative' wordings put after one wording. This is jarring and I wish there had been some form of editing the audio before it went public.

Please edit audio before publishing

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This is quite an academic style book so was harder for me to focus on but was interesting nonetheless. I learned a lot.

Sadly the narration has been poorly edited and you will often hear the same sentence repeated multiple times or with alternatives offered. A shame as the narrator does a good job.

Interesting, academic but poorly edited

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Great book. Audio needs some re-editing as a few rehearsal takes are scattered throughout recording.

Fascinating and thoughtful!

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Thoroughly entertaining and thought-provoking. Required reading for all “good gays”…

My only quibble: there a few audio editing errors where the reader repeats the same sentence with a slightly different intonation.

Required reading…

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