The Log Books

About

Book Talk event-Voices Of Queer Britain and the helpline that listened.
City Books
present

Tash Walker & Adam Zmith talking about, The Log Books

Voices of Queer Britain and the helpline that listened.

In this new book, Tash Walker and Adam Zmith capture queer lives in stunning detail, embarking on a journey of both collective history and self-discovery and propelling it into the very foreground of our national history.

In a crawlspace at the offices of Switchboard, a queer helpline in operation since 1974, lies dozens of log books kept by volunteers describing the phone calls they had taken: a teenager whose parents had kicked them out of home for dressing as the wrong gender; a lesbian terrified of having her baby taken away from her; a man arrested for chatting up another man in a public toilet; a young person wanting to know how to come out. These logs were traces of tens of thousands of queer lives, a bridge to a past hidden from people like Walker and Zmith in their youth, captured by people who lent an ear to those in need.

They came of age in the time of Section 28. In recovering these logs, they encountered people grappling with feelings, questions and problems both familiar and different, and set out to learn from - and sometimes speak to - those on both sides of the calls.

Charged with joy, gossip, sensuality, humour and sometimes fear, and with a potent relevance to the world today, these stories are brought together in The Log Books.

"One of the most intimate portrayals of LGBTQ+ history as you're going to get.. moving and informative in equal parts' Hunger Magazine