A review by mossybookworm
Queer City: Gay London from the Romans to the Present Day by Peter Ackroyd

3.0

As a gay history nerd, I enjoyed learning about queer history in London, but I found this book faltered in a few key ways. While the book did discuss "cross dressers" throughout London's history, they weren't talked about in terms of gender identity, with a focus on sexuality. Gender is presented very firmly as a male/female binary until a few sentences at the end, and the explicit discussion of trans people really only gets a few sentences throughout and a few paragraphs at the end of the last chapter. The last chapter was particularly disappointing - after such interesting deep dives into history from the Romans to 1900, the 20th and 21st centuries get very little coverage. The coverage that is given is frustrating as it seems to think all queer struggle is over now that marriage is legal, and even laments over modern discussions of privilege, which was exasperating. I think this book may have been better if Ackroyd stuck to more distant history and included more analysis and structure there than trying to shove in a relatively sorry chapter about the 20th-21st centuries.