Not bad but not brilliant This book is a bit hit and miss. For a start, the title is a bit of a misnomer as the book covers the period from about 1700 to well into the 20th century. In fact, parts of the book seemed to begin at about 1895, drift into the 20th century and not bother to go back in time at all. Also, because the author skimmed over so much, I wondered if there just wasn't the information available about the 19th century to put in a book, so he had to divert his attentions to cover a wider time period. I don't... more info
On gay life 150 years ago When Mister Graham Robb started his book on homosexual love in the 19th century he was suddenly faced with prejudices he never expected to learn from his friends and colleagues. People even felt pity with his family members. Dad goes gay! But not really. The way Robb handles this irritation is an eye opener and a foretaste of his analyzation on homosexuality for the rest of the book. In other words, Robb is great with chasing away dark clouds to let the sun shine in on this subject. He demonstrates it is... more info
excellent and very funny Id expected a rather dry tome but this is brilliantly written and in places very funny. Well worth the money, although the authors picture has a bit of a scary eyebrow thing going on. Falls off a bit in the last chapter, but the rest is excellent - although he doesn't exactly stick to his topic (19th century seems to include 1700 up to about the 2nd world war!). This is nitpicking though, in general i loved it.
