Aids
The powder keg of 1980s New York
Ed Koch’s mayoralty is beset by violent crime, corruption, racism, Aids and a crack epidemic, with Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump further tormenting him where possible
Whether adored or despised, Princess Diana is never forgotten
Edward White examines the effect of the former Princess of Wales on the millions worldwide who never even laid eyes on her
The sexual escapades of Edmund White sound like an improbably sordid Carry On film
The octogenarian writer seems unable to resist the burlesque, describing the most lurid encounters at an apparently droll remove
When will Ronald Reagan get the recognition he deserves?
Max Boot’s contention that Reagan was a lightweight pragmatist who played little part in reviving America or winning the Cold War is absurdly revisionist
Fall from grace
Robert Gore-Langton explores the remarkable life of televangelist Tammy Faye, and its descent into chaos
Remaking history
The Normal Heart is not about Aids. Larry Kramer’s play is set in New York in 1981 at a time…
Putting on a brave face
San Francisco is a fantastic place… it’s terribly sunny… I am having a splendid hedonistic time here… I find myself…
What the fight against HIV can teach us about defeating Covid-19
In the eighties, we were warned to beware an easily spread, deadly virus. The government’s ominous HIV adverts told us…
The time of our lives
Gay bar, how I miss you. Barely any lesbian joints have survived the online dating scene, and Grindr has replaced…
You’ll wish you were gay
To promote his new drama series about Aids in the early 1980s, Russell T. Davies insisted in an interview that…
The Inheritance isn’t theatre — it’s mesmerically boring TV
Stories by Nina Raine is a bun-in-the-oven comedy with a complex back narrative. Anna, in her mid-thirties, had a boyfriend…
‘Living with’ is now a thing – usually followed by something nasty like Alzheimer’s
I’m not at all sure about the formula a person living with, followed by something unwelcome, such as Alzheimer’s disease,…
Vital signs
Exhibit A. It is 1958 and you are barrelling down a dual carriageway; the 70 mph limit is still eight…
One night in the backwoods
The man I met in the moose-hunters' bar, and what happened between us
‘A good boy trying to be bad’
Robert Mapplethorpe made his reputation as a photographer in the period between the 1969 gay-bashing raid at the Stonewall Inn…
We could end HIV
A new drug could reduce new infections to zero – so why hasn’t the NHS backed it yet?
Life with old father William
This intensely written memoir by Adam Mars-Jones about his Welsh father, Sir William, opens with the death of Sheila, Adam’s…
The lonely struggle of Jude the obscure
Just over a century after Virginia Woolf declared that ‘on or about December 1910 human character changed’, the American novelist…
Letters
What we’re building Sir: I was surprised and frustrated to read Ross Clark’s piece on housing associations in last week’s…
All the pomp of family life
The Green Road is a novel in two parts about leaving and returning home. A big house called Ardeevin, walking…
Give us a break
Gay plays crowd the theatrical canon. There are the necessary enigmas of Noël Coward, like The Vortex or Design For…
Tales from a strip joint
‘It’s not as bad as I thought it would be,’ said Norman Mailer to his wife, Norris Church, after reading…
Voices of the world
‘Don’t take it for granted,’ she warned. ‘It’s one of the few places where you can hear diverse voices, different…
Letters
Aids is still deadly Sir: Dr Pemberton (‘Life after Aids’, 19 April) subscribes to the now prevalent view that we have…
Life after Aids
In the West, the deadliest thing about HIV may now be the stigma
