Queens’ Country

The gay community'. For years Paul Burston has heard talk of this fabled people, whose votes are wooed by politicians, whose pink pounds are courted by advertising executives and whose alternative lifestyle is derided by defenders of family values. But he's never been quite sure who they were. So he decided to set off and try to find them for himself. His travels around gay Britain take in a wide cross-section of people and places, from his own childhood in South Wales to middle-aged gay men enjoying a beach party in Bromley, from the gay couple running their own massage parlour in Bristol to gay Young Conservatives in Derbyshire. Along the way, he comments on the hotly debated gay issues of the day; cappuccino-culture consumerism and community politics; the age of consent and the narcissistic preoccupation with youth; backrooms in bars and gay loft conversions. Witty, irreverent and fiercely intelligent, QUEENS' COUNTRY presents the rich diversity - and occasional cultural poverty - of the forces shaping gay life in modern Britain.