Promote Awesome Dude

[Nigel Gordon]

This is a spin off from some conversations that have been taking place in the Green Room.

The BBC Radio 4 programme Open Book will be looking at Gay Literature on the 21st of November, this is related to the republication of Mary Renault's The Charioteer. If you have not read that book you should.

I would ask any of you who can to go onto the BBC Web Site, www.bbc.co.uk and find the Open Book page http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qp6p, then click on Contact Us tab and select email. You can then email them and suggest that they should look at the Gay Literature that is on the AwesomeDude web site.

Unfortunately programmes like Open Book tend to ignore gay writing on the web as they just look at Nifty and think that is a representative of the whole genre.

[DesDownunder]

Other Mary Renault books I like and recommend:

The Last of the Wine

The Mask of Apollo

Who was Mary Renault? see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Renault

Her writing helped many gay men appreciate that life was worthwhile, including me.

[Nigel Gordon]

Her writing helped many gay men appreciate that life was worthwhile, including me.

There was a mention of Mary Renult on one of the book programmes on BBC Radio 4 earlier this year, I forget which one, and the comment was made that she did more to raise the profile of homosexuality and gave gay men a more positive image of themselves, in the English speaking world during the 1960s than nearly anyone else. The Charioteer did in literature what The Victim did in film. She is well worth reading.