Review:
Forbidden Lives: LGBT Stories from Wales
by Norena Shopland From Planet 231

Planet 228

Rhian E. Jones reviews
Forbidden Lives: LGBT Stories from Wales
by Norena Shopland

Forbidden Lives: LGBT Stories from Wales

Seren, £12.99

Deirdre Beddoe criticised the male-centric nature of Welsh history in 1986, claiming that ‘Welsh history, like English history, has been about chaps’. More than this, it has tended to concentrate on the male, industrial and heteronormative subject at the expense of other experiences. Since the 1980s, Welsh historians have focused on integrating aspects of gender, ethnicity and sexuality, in works including Angela John’s Our Mothers’ Land and Jane Aaron and Chris Williams’ anthology Postcolonial Wales. Norena Shopland’s Forbidden Lives: LGBT Stories from Wales is a welcome step forward into a still largely unexplored historical arena.

Sign in to read more
or
Subscribe here

About the author

Rhian E. Jones grew up in south Wales and now lives in London where she writes on music, history, politics, popular culture, and the places where they intersect. Her books include Clampdown: Pop-Cultural Wars on Class and Gender (zero, 2013); Petticoat Heroes: Gender, Culture and Popular Protest (University of Wales Press, 2015); Triptych: Three Studies of Manic Street Preachers’ The Holy Bible (Repeater, 2017); and Under My Thumb: Songs That Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them (Repeater, 2017). She blogs at Velvet Coalmine and is co-editor of the website New Socialist.