Writing Queer Lives, from Biography to Anthology: Peter Parker in Conversation with Dr Eleri Anona Watson

Global Majority and Underrepresented Writers’ Programme Lecture

May 2026 sees the paperback publication of Peter Parker’s landmark anthology, Some Men in London (2024). Described by Matthew Parris as ‘a work of genius’, the two volumes draw on letters, diaries, journalism, fiction, and police records to explore what life was like for queer men in London from 1945 to 1967, from well-known figures to those who lived in quiet or occasionally rowdy anonymity.

Some Men in London is the latest work in a life-writing career spanning thirty years. Parker will open this event by reflecting on this trajectory – from his contributions to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography to works such as The Last Veteran (2005) and Housman Country (2016). He asks: what do anthologies make possible for life-writers that biography, works of history, and encyclopaedia entries cannot (and vice versa)?

In conversation with Dr Eleri Anona Watson, Parker will turn to the queer lives that have been at the forefront of his works Ackerley: A Life of J. R. Ackerley (1989), Isherwood (2004), and Some Men in London (2024). Together, they will consider the joys and challenges of writing queer lives:

What constitutes queer life-writing?
What are the particular challenges and possibilities of writing lives across uneven and often resistant archives?
How might life-writers straddle the horrors of queer oppression with the defiant humour that has long constituted queer life?
What is the significance of documenting sex, sexual subcultures, and the taboo in queer life-writing, and what are its ethical stakes?

Spanning biography, anthology, history, and archival research, this conversation will appeal to anyone interested in how queer lives are documented, preserved, and narrated. It will also be of interest to students and scholars of life-writing, queer history, and queer theory. No prior specialist knowledge or preparation is required.