Mr Lucas is out!

Hugo Greenhalgh at the launch of his new book in London

The Diaries of Mr Lucas
by Hugo Greenhalgh

The Diaries of Mr Lucas – Notes from a Lost Gay Life

For 60 years Mr George Leo John Lucas led a double life. By day, he was a civil servant at the Board of Trade, but by night – unable to live openly as a Gay man before the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 – he was a fixture of London’s colourful underground gay scene, a twilight world of petty crime, louche pubs and public lavatories. He was also an obsessive diary writer.

When Mr Lucas died in 2014 he left his diaries to the journalist Hugo Greenhalgh. This book combines Mr Lucas’s deliciously indiscreet entries over the course of the 1960s with Greenhalgh’s razor-sharp historical insights. Together they give a vivid, one-of-a-kind account of Gay life that has been overlooked.

A treasure trove of forgotten history: this is Gay London like you’ve never seen it before.

VISIT

“An affecting, vividly illuminating evocation of a lost landscape and its inhabitants.” -Francis Wheen

“Funny, frustrating, poignant and thrilling.” -Paul Baker

“I absolutely love this book” -Michael Cashman

 

A scandalous, hilarious and moving portrait of lost Gay London as seen by civil servant, rent boy user and diarist Mr Lucas, it features the Krays, fallen MPs and closeted stars.

 

ORDER

 

Published: 12th May 2024

Categorised in: News