Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsStarts great… but then…
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 3 May 2024
I bought this book because I was interested in queer history, and the detailed life of a rare queer and candid diarist before legalisation in 1967, should be the perfect book for me.
And actually, the first 1/3 of the book was pretty insightful. We learn about the life of this man, Mr Lucas, through his observations and often tragic loves. The first five chapters show us a complicated individual living a secret life. It’s wonderful, personal, and valuable.
Things start to go awry in the middle third. The focus drifts from Lucas’ life and onto his opinions of news events, like the trial of the Krays, and legalisation. And whereas these things are interesting to have a contemporary opinion on, this section heavily lacks the personal narratives which made the first 1/3 captivating.
The final third of the book was disappointing, mainly as the narrative of Lucas feels subsumed by Hugo Greenhalgh himself, who now wants to tell you about his own life, his opinions on Mr Lucas, and a peculiar moral adjudication; an adjudication we could be making ourselves if Greenhalgh chose to present Lucas as he was, rather than offering long moralising commentary.
I found myself ultimately disappointed. Greenhalgh says multiple times that Lucas wrote millions of words, the vast majority of which Greenhalgh has decided are less important than his own assessment, and indeed, Greenhalgh’s own exploits . Mr Lucas is not thanked in the text either.
All this said, I hope there is a sequel, and a sequel which focuses on Mr Lucas, who although Greenhalgh reiterates is unremarkable, fails to realise, Lucas’ unremarkablity is precisely why queer people need to read him and come to understand what our ordinarily lives once were.
The first third had an important emergent property that those working closely may have missed; it brought home that without the freedoms fought and won in the last fifty years, this is the life we would all be living now. The ordinariness of Lucas showed that.
I hope someone who truly values Mr Lucas gets the opportunity to present the diaries themselves at some point, and lets the queer populace see what their life would have been like had they not been lucky to be born so much later.
To be given such a gift as these diaries… it’s frustrating.