Books, books, books.

From drag on the streets of Old London to whales at the depths of oceans, this is a list of Polari Magazine’s Favourite Books of 2013.

Fanny and Stella.

Win a copy of Neil McKenna’s superb book ‘Fanny and Stella: The Young Men Who Shocked Victorian England’.

The Young Men Who Shocked Victoria England.

Neil McKenna talks about the case of Fanny and Stella, which revealed a hidden underworld of female impersonators and male prostitutes.

” It is significant that the Fanny and Stella trial was in 1870. It is significant that the police and the state cracked down on sexual identity. It was the manifestation of Fanny and Stella’s identity that was the problem as well as their behaviour.”

Oscar Wilde, by Neil McKenna.

To celebrate LGBT History Month, 2013, Polari is publishing a daily series of LGBT Heroes, selected by the magazine’s team of writers and special contributors.

“Oscar Wilde was my introduction to my own cultural history. There was precious little else in those days. It was as if our lives and our histories had been expunged from the records, which in a very real sense they had. “