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.

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