For many years LGBT people have found a ‘safe place’ in television science fiction and fantasy fandom. Paul F Cockburn asks why. Back in the late 1980s, I joined a group of Doctor Who fans in Glasgow, a rather anarchic get-together of young men who shared their love of the show not just with fanzines […]
Tag Archives | Pride Life
Turing Test
60 years after his death, Paul F Cockburn looks back on the life and legacy of the ‘father of computing’, the gay mathematician Alan Turing. “You have to understand the measure of what Alan Turing did,” former cryptographer Captain Jerry Roberts told BBC News back in September 2009. “In 1940/41 the German U-boats were sinking […]
Doubly Disadvantaged
Paul F Cockburn asks just how accessible — physically, and socially — Britain’s gay scene is for those with physical and sensory impairments. One Friday night last June, Robert Softley Gale and his partner Nathan Gale were in Glasgow. They were in celebratory mood: Nathan works with Scottish LGBT charity the Equality Network, which had […]
Doubly Disadvantaged?
Paul F Cockburn asks just how accessible – physically and socially – Britain’s gay scene is for those with physical and sensory impairments. One Friday night last June, Robert Softley Gale and his partner Nathan Gale were in Glasgow. They were in celebratory mood: Nathan works with Scottish LGBT charity the Equality Network, which had […]
Absolutely Queer
Colin MacInnes is nowhere as well known as he ought to be. Perhaps the author–born a century ago this August–would be a more familiar name if Julian Temple’s 1986 musical film adaptation of his 1959 novel Absolute Beginners hadn’t bombed at the box office. Then again, perhaps not: according to US writer Devin McKinney, MacInnes […]
Comic Turns
The 1980s aren’t everyone’s favourite decade but, for theatre producer Nica Burns OBE, there’s at least one thing to look back on with some pride–the comedy. “I was there when ‘Alternative Comedy’ started,” she explains. “The whole point of it was to change things. It had a mission; that jokes that were homophobic, racist or […]
A Polite Queer Revolutionary
Last November, the film and video artist John Smith became the latest recipient of the annual Film London Jarman Award. Smith, who has already built-up an internationally recognised body of work, follows in the steps of, among others, 2012 Turner Prize nominee Luke Fowler, who won the inaugural Jarman Award in 2008. “The breadth and […]
