Radical love

'Neil Blackmore re-imagines a story of gay men in London 200 years ago and under the pain of their betrayal and injustice, he uncovers loyalty and above all, love’ Ian McKellen‘An imaginative, layered, clever story’ The TimesLondon, 1809.

By day, minister John Church preaches to a congregation of commonfolk in Southwark.

By night, he is drawn to the secretive, alluring world of a molly house on Vere Street.

There, ordinary men reinvent themselves as outrageous queens, lads on the make flirt with labourers and princes alike, and John finds himself ordaining marriages between men.

When he meets the unworldly and free-thinking Ned, one of a group of African abolitionists who attend his chapel, John falls in love with Ned's tender nature and discovers how quickly desire can turn to obsession. Based on the true story of one of the most important events in queer history, Radical Love is a sensuous and prescient story about gender and sexuality, and how the most vulnerable survive in dangerous times. ‘I was staggered by this book; one of the boldest novelistic explorations of desire I have read in some time’ Keiran Goddard, author of Hourglass‘Compellingly real’ Daily Mail