My (highly attenuated) attention was recently directed to an LWT doc from 1981 available on YouTube . It compares the pre-war, pre-gay world of ‘sisters’ (‘musical’ friends you didn’t want to fuck) and ‘trade’ (‘normal’ working class ‘real’ men you really did), with the post-Stonewall, butched-up, Marlborough Man world of… Read More »Back to the Future: Escaping Sexology
Mark Simpson goes on a road trip connecting four countries: England, Scotland, the UK – & Yorkshire What’s so ‘Great’ about ‘The Great North Road’? Better known in our more impatient era as the A1? Well, if you’re unfortunate enough to find yourself in the south, it takes you to the… Read More »A1 Love – The Greatness of The Great North Road
We worship the body, watch ancient battles at the multiplex, and bow down before the gods of celebrity. Mark Simpson marvels at how much our culture owes to those skirt-wearing olive-munchers, the Greeks (Independent on Sunday 30 May 2004) Philhellenes are everywhere, and everywhere they look they see the glory that… Read More »Apollo’s Acolytes
Why does the love story of Hadrian and Antinous seem so contemporary? Mark Simpson argues we’re all pagans now. (Originally appeared in the Independent on Sunday, 09/06/2002) OF ALL THE MEN who wore the purple of Rome, Hadrian seems the most ‘modern’, the most sympathetic and the most tasteful. This second-century… Read More »Antinous: The Very First Pop Idol
According to the Daily Telegraph’s front page, it’s ‘Sunset’ for the Senior Service: ‘Navy to cut its fleet by half’. The Navy that once ruled the waves, the global maritime force on which the sun never set, and gave the world some of the most romantic not to mention fetishistically ingenious uniforms ever… Read More »Union Street Blues: Plymouth’s Last ‘Run Ashore’?