Book the youngest director of book

At 32 Leonard Bissel seems to have everything going for him newly appointed as the youngest director of a major London corporation he has a posh house in Chelsea a shiny black MG and a promising new relationship There s just one problem Leonard s boss and his family expect him to marry not knowing that he is secretly gay and wants nothing than to settle down in a stable relationship with his partner John As Leonard s employer and his parents increase the pressure on him to marry he will be faced with an impossible decision is he willing to give up his job his family his home and everything he s worked for in order to remain true to his own identity and the person he loves Published in 1961 when homosexuality was still illegal in England Martyn Goff s The Youngest Director is a landmark of British gay fiction A gripping story exposing the injustice and prejudice faced by gay men in the mid 20th century Goff s novel remains highly topical today as gay rights and the struggle for marriage equality continue to dominate the headlines This edition the first in 30 years includes a new introduction by Martin Dines and an afterword by the author The Youngest Director 20th Century Martyn Goff was born in 1923 the son of a Russian fur dealer who had emigrated to London and established himself with great success As a youth Goff read prodigiously and at 19 he was offered a place at Oxford to read English but he joined the RAF and served in the Second World War instead After the war at age 22 Goff decided to become a bookseller in 1946 he opened his first shop and before long opened others. The youngest director kindle unlimited Goff published his first novel The Plaster Fabric in 1957 at a time when homosexuality was still illegal in Britain and authors who wrote openly about it could find themselves prosecuted However the book earned a rave review from the popular poet and critic John Betjeman and as Goff has said After that the authoriti Martyn Goff was born in 1923 the son of a Russian fur dealer who had emigrated to London and established himself with great success As a youth Goff read prodigiously and at 19 he was offered a place at Oxford to read English but he joined the RAF and served in the Second World War instead After the war at age 22 Goff decided to become a bookseller in 1946 he opened his first shop and before long opened others. The youngest directorg ggg Goff published his first novel The Plaster Fabric in 1957 at a time when homosexuality was still illegal in Britain and authors who wrote openly about it could find themselves prosecuted However the book earned a rave review from the popular poet and critic John Betjeman and as Goff has said After that the authorities could hardly condemn it He went on to publish several other novels three of these The Youngest Director 1961 Indecent Assault 1967 and Tar and Cement 1988 dealt with gay themes He has also published a number of non fiction works including books on collecting vinyl records. Whos the youngest director to win an oscar Goff is credited by many as one of the most significant figures in modern British fiction for his involvement with the Booker Prize which he helped to create and oversaw for its first 36 years Little noticed and even jeered at in its early years the Booker under Goff s chairmanship grew into one of the world s major literary awards attracting an annual media frenzy and guaranteeing huge sales for winners and shortlisted novels As Goff approached retirement in 2002 John Sutherland wrote in The Guardian The current health of English fiction can be explained in two words Martyn Goff Martyn Goff lives in London with his partner Rubio Tapani Lindroos the two met in the late 1960s after the latter then a student wrote a fan letter to the author after reading The Youngest Director Biography used with permission from site_link Valancourt Books site_link Superficially the gay world has changed life is freer open but underneath the central problems remain the same This is quote printed at the back of my 1983 edition of the book itself taken from the introduction written by the author for this reissue of the book Reading the book in 2017 the quote still applies Published in 1961 the year of release of the seminal film Victim The Youngest Director is part of the militant and cultural push of the time to see the implementation of the Wolfenden report s recommendations partial decriminalisation of homosexual acts become law As such it is a mostly positive depiction of gay life and the pressures put on it by society and the law It is at times a little transparently didactic and covers of lot of the issues faced by gay people at the time of publication It is also consistently moralistic adopting assimilationist and respectable views similar one would assume to those of the Homosexual Law Reform Society But what is most striking about the book is how fresh and contemporary most of it feels It could almost have been published last month The dilemmas and situations faced by the characters are emminently recognisable to the point of unoriginality which I think shows how pioneering this book was for its time or perhaps simply that human relations preoccupations and fears haven t changed that much in almost 60 years English Nowhere near as captivating as The Plaster Fabric but an interesting read about the consequences of being outed and the difficulties of establishing a long term monogamous relationship in a frivolous and sex obsessed gay male world There s a thin line to my mind between a book and its characters being true to everyday life and their boring the reader with the quotidian and the mundane This book successfully treads that line without inducing yawns Curiously as I read this I kept forgetting that it dates from the 1950s In many ways it seems to speak with a modern voice Then again in other ways it is as dated as you d expect with the main character constantly protesting he is not a criminal which of course was technically incorrect in 1950s Britain English A very interesting second novel that I have read by Goff a courageous author of gay men s literature reflecting post WW II to to the 90 s These are British and dated in the sense that most everyone has moved on from the tense classist social structure and the invisibility of gays during this period of the book but the over analyzing Leonard the young corporate executive who is trying unsuccessfully to bring respectable homosexuals to the table as equal members of society struggles with his ambivalent love of John a hotel desk clerk from of lower class background and the cob webby and alternately courageous and ashamed thinking that he is fighting though in his own mind I enjoyed the book English Great gay classic insight into gay life in the 50s 60s and even today Well written English