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We are very lucky that Edmund Marlowe managed to persuade his good friend Stephen Nicholson to write this memoir before the latter's untimely death from cancer in 2020. It is a book both intriguing and gripping - and could only really have been written in the circumstances in which its author found himself. Those circumstances were admittedly sad - terminally ill at a relatively young age and, importantly, with no close family to be embarrassed or damaged by a frank and honest appraisal of what was obviously a full life as a BL - but he has, I believe, left us an important legacy. There were many things in the book to which I related closely while, interestingly, there were also several things to which I didn't - indeed there was one particular area that, surprisingly, rather shocked me. But this is as it should be. No-one is going to have absolutely identical feelings or mores, and those of us who perhaps live a little on the fringe of what is currently considered acceptable and proper must try to be as open minded as we hope (or, at least, wish) others might be towards our own selves! The book is extremely well written (though it took me a chapter or so to settle down) and throughout it shows a keen intelligence and a well developed sense of humour. Given that the book was written over a short period of time, a time in which the author was also battling an aggressive and terminal illness, it is a remarkable achievement. Nicholson died before he managed to finish the memoir in its entirety, but it is very sensitively completed by its editor, Edmund Marlowe. I heartily recommend this book to all here - and I suspect that, in time, it will become an established classic amongst us 'men of good taste' (Nicholson's own stylish euphemism), taking its place alongside the works of Michael Davidson and other similarly celebrated BLs. |