Here’s a pound. You may need it.’ He hands me a note; such a dear at times that I feel like pouring cream over him and eating him up. He really is top quality. Musical artist Hozier released the single Swan Upon Leda in 2022, referencing the myth as a tool to advocate for reproductive rights. [ citation needed]

Ellis harbours his own sexual peccadillo, and his marriage to Edith is never successfully consummated for reasons revealed by gradients. However, the heterosexual male perspective, what identity politic might term today as ‘patriarchal’, on inversion allows for an unsentimental assessment of the perceived vice and its carceral punishment, whilst also providing avenues beyond the queer for readers:Hyatt’s poems appear in the anthologies Children of Albion: Poetry of the Underground in Britain (Penguin Books, 1969) and Not Love Alone: A Modern Gay Anthology (GMP Publishers, 1985). His only known novel, Love, Leda (Peninsula Press), is considered an important document of queer, working-class life and a portrait of 1960s Soho in London. The novel was completed in 1965 but remained unpublished until 2023. S o Much For Life, a collection of Hyatt’s poems coedited by Luke Roberts and Sam Ladkin, was published by Nightboat Books in 2023. In an essay for the Times Literary Supplement, Roberts observed. Mark Hyatt was born into poverty in 1940 and died by suicide in 1972. The manuscript for his sole novel Love, Leda (written in around 1965, but never published) was left to gather dust in the house of a friend until its rediscovery in 2019. It is a febrile assemblage of experiences in the life of a young gay man in the early Sixties, set across ten or so days and nights in London. CHASING PLANTS: Author and botanical illustrator Dr Chris Thorogood is at Chelsea Physic Garden to discuss plant diversity, touching on species found in swamps, rainforests and mountains. He also talks about carnivorous plants and finishes up with a Q&A session. 2.30pm-3.30pm This newly discovered, never-before-published novel – which pre-dates the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 – is a portrait of a lost Soho, as well as an important document of queer, working-class life, from a voice long overlooked.

I suppose I’m upset that he left me for another girl. I’d thought him more intelligent.’ ‘Drink up and I’ll take you for a ride.’ She looks at me with wonder. We finish our drinks and make our exit. LAURA ASHLEY EXHIBITION: Fashion and homewares brand Laura Ashley open a mini exhibition to celebrate its 70th anniversary — so miniature, that it fits inside a phone box. You'll find in on Floral Street in Covent Garden, the phone box wrapped in a Tulips print from the '90s, containing a display of fabrics, patterns, prints and products from the brand's seven decades. FREE, 27 January-5 February Further information: Leda (mythology) Eroticism [ edit ] Leda and the Swan, Roman marble possibly reflecting a lost work by Timotheos; restored ( Prado) The Buggery Act was thorough but non-discriminatory in its application, threatening capital punishment for all non-procreative sex, be it with man, woman ‘or Beast’. One of the first same-sex violations of the act was a Nicholas Udall in 1541, headmaster of Eton, charged with offences against his pupils (he escaped the noose and wound up headmaster of Westminster). It was during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that multiple records for homosexual offences were recorded, and the word ‘molly’ entered slang parlance as both a Moll Flanders-esque prostitute and a nascent gay identity: a typically effeminate, homosexual male. Tears of farewell begin to flow down my face. (He cried in a city of dreams, where love is everlasting but hope forgotten.) I tear the paper in half, spring up suddenly and make a bitter exit. Outside, the early morning is without grace. I know it to be only the emotions of the moment but I feel I must give some service to our old friendship. I rush in and out of the cars in the Strand, trying to make up for a friendship I had forgotten which is eating me.SCIENCE MUSEUM LATE: Once a month, the Science Museum keeps its doors open late, and tonight's theme is Chinese New Year. Browse the exhibitions and displays after hours, hear a panel of scientists giving their predictions for the year ahead, learn Chinese calligraphy, dance at a silent disco and more. FREE, 6.30pm-10pm