Last week, I was delighted to receive my copy of Diana Souhami’s latest book No Modernism Without Lesbians. Unable to host her book launch at Gay’s the Word on publication day due to lockdown, she posted her speech on Facebook.
I was struck when she said it was ‘a breakthrough that her publishers loved the idea of “lesbians” in the title’. Apparently, when she started writing biographies 35 years ago you had to avoid the word at all costs if you wanted a mainstream audience.