The Magic of Weightlessness.

After Experiencing a Floatation Tank for the first time, Polari’s Editor Decides to Find Out More about this Incredible Form of Relaxation.

“As soon as you stop moving, and you float – you’re not hot you’re not cold, you don’t see, you don’t touch – your mind and body aren’t necessarily talking. Then you can go to a much deeper level of relaxation, as there isn’t always the constant reminder of the body.”

[rating=5]
176 pages & 256 pages • Penguin English Library • 31 May & 27 September, 2012 [PB]

E.M. Forster’s Italian novels are full of beauty and conflict, and the film versions are but pale shadow.

“A Room With A View is a romantic comedy, and a more conventional book than Where Angels Fear To Tread. Forster was apprehensive about it, and he fretted over the quality of the character’s inner lives.”

Bad Romances.

Bastian Korff talks cabaret, finding the emotion in the pop songs he covers, and the difference between British and German audiences.

“Bastian Korff has a splendid, powerful voice. In his stripped-down renditions of classic pop he finds the heart of the song, and what he sings is raw and decidedly real.”

[rating=5]
592 pages • Penguin • 26 April, 2012 [HB], originally Chapman & Hall • 1861

Great Expectations is a glorious, mesmerising book about hope, and how that hope is used against people by those who have been disappointed.

“This tale of great promise, and the disappointment of that promise, is extraordinarily powerful. Throughout his work, Dickens is interested in how people are created by circumstance, as well as the characters that wield circumstance to their own ends.”

A Polysexual Education.

Rubyyy Jones, writer, burlesque performer, and sex educator, talks to Polari about her art in this entertaining and instructive interview.

What would you do?

Christopher Bryant writes about how he reacted when the words ‘fucking poof’ were muttered by a passerby.

“It’s the centre of London, within a stone’s throw of the gay bars of Soho, so I didn’t think twice about putting my arms around him and kissing him goodbye. A pair of lads walked by and one of them muttered, ‘fucking poofs’.”

Part 3: The Roman Empire Outlaws Homosexuality

The third part of series A Queer History that looks back to Early Greece and onward to now. The Roman Empire outlaws homosexuality.

“The construction of Christianity under the Roman emperors was not about the religion. It was about power.”

Jay Parini to write Vidal Biography.

Polari’s editor talked to Gore Vidal about Jay Parini being his ideal biographer back in 2009. Parini has been contracted by Doubleday to write the biography for a 2015 publication.

“I asked if there was any chance that Parini would write the decent biography, and added, ‘he seems to me like the best candidate’. Vidal responded, ‘I think he would be, but I prefer some things after death’.”

[rating=4]
Viking • March 10, 2012 [HB]

Tom Bullough’s Konstantin is a impressionistic novel about the opening of a young mind to a world of wonders and possibilities.

“Konstantin opens in 1867 and tells the story of how the young boy Kostya grows up to become Konstantin Tsiolosky, the father of Russian rocketry and astronautics (1857-1935).”

Part 2: The Roman Empire Starts to Turn Against Homosexuality

The second part of the series A Queer History that looks back to Early Greece and forward to the way we live now. The Roman Empire turns against homosexuality.

“From 323 BCE, the Roman empire absorbed Greece, but it did so selectively. Although homosexuality was acknowledged, it had no place within the social structure, as it had in Greece.”