In 1980 there were very few UK bookshops that stocked gay titles. Those that did limited their selection to ‘the classics’ such as The Well of Loneliness, rather than contemporary gay writing.

The situation was compounded by the fact that both gay and feminist publishing houses were very much in their infancy. For example, The Women’s Press and Gay Men’s Press didn’t start until 1979, Brilliance Books not until 1983.

In practice, this meant that putting a wider range of gay/lesbian literature on the shelves would require booksellers to import it – usually from the USA. That in itself would be a bridge too far for most mainstream bookstores. Add to that the propensity of Her Majesty’s Customs to impound anything that looked in the slightest bit perverse or ‘obscene’ and it was enough to discourage all but the hardiest of literary souls.

And that was the background against which I began to buy gay books. I was just beginning to come out of my shell at that time: even though I had ‘officially’ come out in 1976, I only began to engage (tentatively) with gay people or organisations from 1980. In retrospect, I think that reticence also explains my first choices of gay books.

I didn’t go to somewhere as up-front as Gay’s the Word bookstore, nor did I risk approbation by buying something ‘gay’ in a mainstream bookshop (presuming I could find anything). I went instead to Housman’s radical bookstore in London and bought ‘Socialism and the New Life: the personal and sexual politics of Edward Carpenter and Havelock Ellis.”

It was as dry as cardboard – but it was safe. Nice, neutral cover. Unambiguously academic – lest there be any suggestion I was interested in something erotic.

Unsurprisingly, I never read it! It was one small step for a (clearly anxious) man – but not in any really purposeful direction.

Which still leaves me wondering how (and where) I ever did buy gay books that actually had a bit of sex in them (such as ‘Milkman’s on his Way’, ‘The Boys on the Rock’, ‘Teardrops on My Drum’…). As well as my own reticence to declare an interest in erotic gay literature, these books simply weren’t available in bookshops in my home town of Nottingham – not even at Mushroom, the town’s radical bookshop. And regular trips to Gay’s the Word in London simply weren’t financially feasible.

I did end up buying gay books – lots of them. But I can’t for the life of me think where I would have got them in the early Eighties – certainly not at W.H. Smith’s! Maybe it just goes to show that, where there’s a will (albeit an ambiguous one), there’s a way.