Against the Law

Very interesting and articulate memoir of the "Montagu case" and Wildeblood's trial and conviction in 1954. Somewhat self-serving, as you would expect—Wildeblood was a professional journalist and knew very well how to sidestep the awkward questions and keep our attention on the points he wants us to take in. His attempt to distance himself, as a kind of ideal homosexual, from 95% of gay culture and (implicitly) from the whole nasty business of having sex with men, together with his rather half-baked theories of causes and cures, will certainly irritate modern readers, but they are all very much of the period: you get much the same thing in the classic pulp novel The Heart in Exile, published the year before Wildeblood was convicted. show more

Definitely essential reading for anyone interested in the life of gay men in early fifties London and the events that led up to the Wolfenden Report; also pretty useful for what it tells about prison life at that time. But it shouldn't be taken in isolation, because of the way it distorts the facts in Wildeblood's favour. Some of Wildeblood's understanding of what was going on also doesn't seem to be supported by other evidence, in particular the idea that the Montagu prosecution was part of a witch-hunt designed to appease the Americans after the defection of Burgess and Maclean. See for instance Patrick Higgins, Heterosexual dictatorship for a fierce critique of Wildeblood's account. Higgins dismisses the idea of the witch-hunt completely, arguing that it had more to do with a shift in the way the press reported prosecutions for sexual offences. show less

Peter Wildeblood was a successful journalist who was imprisoned in the 1950s for homosexual offences in a case that highlighted the ruthlessness of the police in trying to secure convictions, and at least partly contributed to the turn in the public opinion on homosexual acts between consenting adults in private. There was a recent TV adaptation of the case which, as I discovered now, differed somewhat from Wildeblood's account here. Very interesting.

An interesting perspective from the history of homosexual discrimination.