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Naked Civil Servant: Queer Sex, Catholicism and Conformism in the Post-War London Diaries of George Lucas

Janes, Dominic

Authors



Abstract

The minutely documented diaries of an ‘everyman’ such as George Lucas enable us to view the complex pleasures and challenging realities of the postwar queer quotidian in remarkable detail. A sample of the years after 1957, when Lucas was aged in his thirties, suggests that more attention needs to be paid to age-differential relationships and to the problematic aspects of the sexual idolisation of young men. Lucas’s respectably boring career and Catholic faith can, however, be understood as having provided the stability on which his emotional survival depended. Other such unglamorous queer lives can now be viewed with greater empathy.

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Feb 4, 2023
Online Publication Date Oct 10, 2023
Publication Date Oct 10, 2023
Publicly Available Date Oct 11, 2025
Journal History Workshop Journal
Print ISSN 1363-3554
Electronic ISSN 1477-4569
Publisher Oxford University Press
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 96
Article Number dbad014
Pages 25–45
DOI https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/dbad014
Keywords History and Philosophy of Science, History