Here is a book to have by your bedside or fireside so that you can dip into it, reading just one or two chapters and then taking the time to absorb and consider what you have learned, perhaps delving deeper into some of the lives and events in the LGBT story of Wales that particularly fire your interest. Forbidden Lives is a compendium of twenty-five short essays on people and subjects as diverse as Gerald of Wales, the surge in cross-dressing in the 1890s, the Dancing Marquis, Pride in Wales and the Wolfenden Report. Norena Shopland carefully accords attention to the famous, the infamous and the relatively unknown; to ancient history and more recent events; to the local, national and global though always with the focus on Wales.My mind is boggling with information, and I shall be re-reading many of the pieces for confirmation and clarification. Ive learned so much, its difficult to hold it all clearly in my head. I hadnt realised how many people in and of Wales had played such significant roles in LGBT history. Some names are of course familiar: Gwen John, the Ladies of Llangollen, Jan Morris, even that Dancing Marquis, the fifth Marquis of Anglesey. But what about the Welsh Sappho, Katherine Philips, who from her home in Cardigan was to write poetry that marked her out as the first significant female British poet; or John Randell, the Welsh surgeon who set up the first Gender Identity Clinic at Charing Cross Hospital, thus finally granting some recognition for trans people in the UK; or the extraordinary Cranogwen bard, sea captain, owner of a navigation school, the first woman editor of a Welsh womens magazine, preacher, promoter of Welsh womens writing, co-founder of the South Wales Womens Temperance Union?As in any struggle for rights and recognition, there are disappointments and contradictions along the way.

There is Goronwy Reess involvement in the Wolfenden Report and his one whopper of a mistake; Leo Abse playing such an instrumental role in the implementation of the basic principles of the Wolfenden Report, whilst still referring to homosexual men as faulty males and wanting to guard against any possibility of homosexual marriage; and Ernest Joness role in blocking homosexuals from becoming members of the British Institute of Psychoanalysis: Despite their liberal attitude towards partial decriminalisation, the beliefs of the psychoanalysts were to dominate the history of sexual orientation. [] Only in 1992 did the World Health Organisation remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. That is truly shocking.In his foreword, Jeffrey Weeks rightly says that the stories Shopland has brought together here provide the necessary outline of what a full history of LGBT life in Wales will be. The stories are fascinating, enlightening and thought-provoking in themselves; together they form a valuable sourcebook for further study and research.Suzy Ceulan HughesIt is possible to use this review for promotional purposes, but the following acknowledgment should be included: A review from www.gwales.com , with the permission of the Welsh Books Council.

Gellir defnyddio'r adolygiad hwn at bwrpas hybu, ond gofynnir i chi gynnwys y gydnabyddiaeth ganlynol: Adolygiad oddi ar www.gwales.com , trwy ganiatd Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru.