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The Light of Day: The First Man to Come Out at the Day of Gay Liberation
'Miraculous. The Light of Day reclaims a forgotten hero . . . I couldn't put it down' - Will Tosh
'Sir, we are homosexuals . . .'
So began the letter penned by Roger Butler and sent to several British newspaper editors - some of whom were so shocked they thought it was a hoax - in June 1960. Writing such a letter seven years before the decriminalisation of homosexuality was a radical and dangerous move. It was a risk that set a major milestone in the fight for gay rights - one that has been almost entirely forgotten.
This is the story of the first man to come out voluntarily, using his own name, to the entire British public, a decade before activists started petitioning gay people everywhere to 'come out proud'. Taking us through a
criminalised underworld of gay pubs, parties and activist meetings, The Light of Day charts how Roger helped bring about the legalisation of homosexuality, but soon found himself marginalised from the movement he kickstarted after losing his sight in his early 30s.
Enter Christopher - a student asked to visit and read to an old, blind man at the beginning of a new century. As their intergenerational friendship bloomed, Roger came to trust Christopher with his most precious memoirs of his revolutionary past, locked away in his home. After Roger's death, Christopher opened a series of unsent letters, left in a pink folder, addressed to him. They contained Roger's final wish, for Christopher finally to bring his remarkable, hidden story into the light of day.
'At times gripping, at times very personal, this remains an important piece of objective history, faithfully recorded and beautifully written' - Matthew Parris
'Sir, we are homosexuals . . .'
So began the letter penned by Roger Butler and sent to several British newspaper editors - some of whom were so shocked they thought it was a hoax - in June 1960. Writing such a letter seven years before the decriminalisation of homosexuality was a radical and dangerous move. It was a risk that set a major milestone in the fight for gay rights - one that has been almost entirely forgotten.
This is the story of the first man to come out voluntarily, using his own name, to the entire British public, a decade before activists started petitioning gay people everywhere to 'come out proud'. Taking us through a
criminalised underworld of gay pubs, parties and activist meetings, The Light of Day charts how Roger helped bring about the legalisation of homosexuality, but soon found himself marginalised from the movement he kickstarted after losing his sight in his early 30s.
Enter Christopher - a student asked to visit and read to an old, blind man at the beginning of a new century. As their intergenerational friendship bloomed, Roger came to trust Christopher with his most precious memoirs of his revolutionary past, locked away in his home. After Roger's death, Christopher opened a series of unsent letters, left in a pink folder, addressed to him. They contained Roger's final wish, for Christopher finally to bring his remarkable, hidden story into the light of day.
'At times gripping, at times very personal, this remains an important piece of objective history, faithfully recorded and beautifully written' - Matthew Parris
- GenresNonfictionLGBTGay
414 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
January 25, 2026
Actual rating: 4.5
The Light of Day: The First Man to Come Out at the Dawn of Gay Liberation tells the story of Roger Butler, a British gay man and activist who came out publicly in 1960, 7 years before it was legal to be homosexual in England. I'd never heard of Roger Butler before this book and I was surprised, and saddened at how he's largely been forgotten when his story is one that should have a prominent place in queer history.
The book tells Roger Butler's life story as well as some of Christopher Stephens's. Stephens is both the co-author and was a dear friend of Butler's later in life when, as a uni student, Stephens was asked to help read to Butler, a then blind man in his 60s. The focus is definitely on Butler's story though, as it should be.
The Light of Day is mainly told through diaries, letters, and writings Butler left behind, as well as Stephens's stories from their time together.
Soon after Butler started attending university, he realized he was gay and shortly afterwards, he became part of a queer activism group in London. Coming out publicly in 1960 was a feat of incredible bravery and done in the belief that to achieve not only tolerance but acceptance, respect, and equal legal standing, the public needed to see gay men as actual real people and not merely some vague, terrible notion of immorality and evil.
Unfortunately, two failed eye surgeries to heal his lifelong bad sight turned Butler fully blind in his mid-thirties. He struggled with navigating a world not built for disabled people, and became more and more isolated. He was no longer part of the queer activism group who seemed to have largely forgotten about his brave contribution, and as his few close friends started dying, Butler's isolation became greater. During this time, he turned to writing in his house in Oxford - the best he could when he was unable to read back what he'd written. That continued until he met Stephens who brought companionship and love back in Butler's life in the years before his death in 2011.
This book was a fascinating, brave, emotional, and often sad story. Though there were elements of love and lightness, I definitely found myself full on sobbing more than once.
The Light of Day's a powerful biography of a man whose name should be one we all know. Roger Butler deserves to be in history books and I'm very glad to have gotten to know about him.
The Light of Day: The First Man to Come Out at the Dawn of Gay Liberation tells the story of Roger Butler, a British gay man and activist who came out publicly in 1960, 7 years before it was legal to be homosexual in England. I'd never heard of Roger Butler before this book and I was surprised, and saddened at how he's largely been forgotten when his story is one that should have a prominent place in queer history.
The book tells Roger Butler's life story as well as some of Christopher Stephens's. Stephens is both the co-author and was a dear friend of Butler's later in life when, as a uni student, Stephens was asked to help read to Butler, a then blind man in his 60s. The focus is definitely on Butler's story though, as it should be.
The Light of Day is mainly told through diaries, letters, and writings Butler left behind, as well as Stephens's stories from their time together.
Soon after Butler started attending university, he realized he was gay and shortly afterwards, he became part of a queer activism group in London. Coming out publicly in 1960 was a feat of incredible bravery and done in the belief that to achieve not only tolerance but acceptance, respect, and equal legal standing, the public needed to see gay men as actual real people and not merely some vague, terrible notion of immorality and evil.
Unfortunately, two failed eye surgeries to heal his lifelong bad sight turned Butler fully blind in his mid-thirties. He struggled with navigating a world not built for disabled people, and became more and more isolated. He was no longer part of the queer activism group who seemed to have largely forgotten about his brave contribution, and as his few close friends started dying, Butler's isolation became greater. During this time, he turned to writing in his house in Oxford - the best he could when he was unable to read back what he'd written. That continued until he met Stephens who brought companionship and love back in Butler's life in the years before his death in 2011.
This book was a fascinating, brave, emotional, and often sad story. Though there were elements of love and lightness, I definitely found myself full on sobbing more than once.
The Light of Day's a powerful biography of a man whose name should be one we all know. Roger Butler deserves to be in history books and I'm very glad to have gotten to know about him.
June 6, 2025
'The Light of Day' puts Roger Butler into his proper place as a gay rights pioneer and advocate. Butler came out in the British press when so many gay men were afraid of the repercussions. Christopher Stephens and Louise Radnofsky have created a hybrid work: part biography of Butler and part memoir of Stephens' relationship with Butler. Stephens grew close to an older Butler, and he connects his life to what he learned from Butler. I found 'The Light of Day' a fascinating and engrossing read. It is maddening though that so much of gay history has been kept from us. Everyone should know about Roger Butler, and this is a wonderful way of introducing Roger Butler to readers.
July 9, 2025
A beautiful book and such an important story. Fascinating to learn about the experiences of someone who managed to cleverly defy the law before homosexuality was decriminalised and then read about their experiences with blindness later in life. Cleverly woven together with snippets of Christopher’s own story too.
July 27, 2026
I felt this was a timely read for the 2026 WorldPride events.
There are moments in history when private lives, long lived in the shadows, suddenly become legible. Not because the world has changed, but because someone has taken the risk of speaking plainly.
In The Light of Day, Christopher Stephens and Louise Radnofsky trace one such moment — and the long, complicated life that surrounded it — through the story of Roger Butler, a blind gay activist whose papers, recordings and memories form one of the most intimate archives of queer life in postwar Britain.
The book begins not with a political rally or a courtroom, but with a small, unassuming house in east Oxford. It is the early 2000s. Christopher Stephens, then a young student, has been asked by a friend to visit a man in his sixties and read to him.
The request is simple enough, but the man — Roger Butler — wants to know one thing before he agrees: Is he one of us? The question lands with the weight of decades. For Butler, 'one of us' is not merely a matter of identity; it is a matter of safety, trust, and the possibility of being understood without translation.
Christopher passes the test. And so begins a friendship that will shape the rest of his life — and, eventually, this book.
Stephens’s early visits are tentative. Butler is wary, proud, and accustomed to disappointment. But slowly, over bottles of red wine and readings of Alan Hollinghurst and Edmund White, the two men settle into a rhythm: Stephens reads aloud, Butler listens, interrupts, laughs, corrects, remembers.
Sometimes he asks Stephens to read his own autobiographical essays — fragments of a life lived in secrecy, danger and occasional exhilaration.
These scenes form the emotional core of The Light of Day. They are quiet, domestic, almost mundane. Yet they carry a charge that is unmistakably political. In a world where gay men had long been forced to hide, the simple act of reading aloud becomes a kind of reclamation. It is companionship as resistance, intimacy as testimony.
Stephens writes of discovering, for the first time, what it felt like to belong to a 'tribe.' The word is striking. It suggests not only solidarity but relief — the relief of finding people who understand the contours of your life without needing them explained.
For Butler, whose youth was spent in a Britain where homosexuality was illegal, that relief had been rare. For Stephens, it arrives in the form of an older man who has lived through the worst of it and survived.
To understand Butler’s life, one must understand the world he grew up in. Homosexuality remained illegal in Britain until 1967, and the law’s hostility shaped every aspect of gay existence.
Men lived with the constant threat of police raids, public shaming, loss of employment, and imprisonment. The Wolfenden Report of 1957 recommended decriminalisation, but the government refused to act. The Homosexual Law Reform Society was founded in response, staffed largely by volunteers who risked their reputations simply by being associated with it.
It was in this climate that Butler, on 3 June 1960, joined two colleagues in writing a letter to British national newspapers including politically conservative The Spectator. It began, with startling simplicity:
It was an act of moral clarity so rare that it reads now like a flare shot up from the darkness.
Stephens and Radnofsky treat this moment not as a historical footnote but as a hinge — a point at which private suffering tipped into public courage. They show how acts of self‑declaration, so dangerous then, would become central to later movements for equality.
Butler’s letter is presented as both a personal risk and a political tactic, a gesture that looked forward to battles still decades away.
Butler’s blindness, which struck in his thirties, adds another layer of complexity to the story. It narrowed his world but sharpened his voice. He became, in effect, a writer without a readership — a man who filled notebooks, tapes and diaries with reflections on his parents, his loneliness, his friendships, his activism, and the strange, stubborn hope that carried him through the years.
When Butler died in 2011, he left all his papers to Stephens. The archive was vast, chaotic, and deeply personal. It contained not only autobiographical essays but home recordings — crackly, imperfect, sometimes moving, sometimes mundane. In one of the final recordings, Butler says he does not regret going blind because it led him to Oxford, and to Stephens.
It is a line that lands softly but stays with you.
The authors approach this archive with care, not attempting to impose a single narrative on Butler’s life but instead letting the fragments speak. The telling swings between eras — the fearful 1950s and '60s, the more permissive but still complicated early 2000s — with a looseness that feels organic rather than disorganised; a structure that mirrors how memory works: associative, wandering, occasionally contradictory.
Here, legacy media reviewers have been perceptive. Matthew Parris, writing in the Times Literary Supplement, notes that Stephens 'never entirely works out what kind of book he meant to write.' It is meant not as criticism but as praise. The book’s refusal to settle into a single genre — biography, memoir, social history, personal tribute — becomes its strength. It mirrors the very life it describes: untidy, searching, full of digressions and sudden illuminations.
One of the book’s most striking qualities is its insistence that political change is not only the work of committees and campaigns but of friendships. Stephens’s weekly visits to Butler’s home are not framed as heroic. They are ordinary acts of care.
Yet in the context of Butler’s life, they become extraordinary. They offer companionship in a world that had often denied it. They offer recognition in a world that had often refused it.
This suggests that visibility — the act of being seen — is one of the most radical experiences a person can have. Butler’s life was shaped by the danger of visibility. Stephens’s life was shaped by the relief of it. Their friendship becomes a bridge between these two realities.
Radnofsky’s contribution ensures that the story never loses sight of the broader context. She supplies the historical scaffolding — the Wolfenden Report, the founding of the Homosexual Law Reform Society, the slow path to decriminalisation — with clarity and restraint. The political never overwhelms the personal; it frames it.
Although The Light of Day is rooted in the past, it speaks directly to the present. In an era when LGBTQIA+ rights are again contested in parts of the world, Butler’s story feels less like distant history and more like a reminder of how fragile progress can be.
The account shows that liberation was not inevitable. It was built by people who risked their jobs, their reputations and their freedom simply by telling the truth.
Stephens and Radnofsky do not indulge in triumphalism. They acknowledge the reactionary undercurrents that persisted long after 1967, and the loneliness that shaped Butler’s life even in more permissive decades.
Never quite bleak it is, in its way, a celebration: of friendship, of intellectual companionship, of the small acts of loyalty that sustain a person through difficult years.
In the end, The Light of Day is about seeing and being seen. It is about the courage required to make oneself visible in a hostile world, and the quieter courage of showing up for someone who has lived too long in the dark.
It is a tribute to a man who wrote in the margins, who risked everything by signing his name, and who found, late in life, a companion willing to read him back into the world.
Stephens and Radnofsky have written a book that glows with understated grace. It does not try to dazzle. It pays attention — to a life, to a friendship, to the long, slow arc of change. And in that attention, it finds its light.
The back cover comment by Sir Ian McKellen reads: 'Your book is the "really good book. Just one" that Roger Butler would have wanted.'
I agree.
A beautiful, heartwarming read about friendship.
There are moments in history when private lives, long lived in the shadows, suddenly become legible. Not because the world has changed, but because someone has taken the risk of speaking plainly.
In The Light of Day, Christopher Stephens and Louise Radnofsky trace one such moment — and the long, complicated life that surrounded it — through the story of Roger Butler, a blind gay activist whose papers, recordings and memories form one of the most intimate archives of queer life in postwar Britain.
The book begins not with a political rally or a courtroom, but with a small, unassuming house in east Oxford. It is the early 2000s. Christopher Stephens, then a young student, has been asked by a friend to visit a man in his sixties and read to him.
The request is simple enough, but the man — Roger Butler — wants to know one thing before he agrees: Is he one of us? The question lands with the weight of decades. For Butler, 'one of us' is not merely a matter of identity; it is a matter of safety, trust, and the possibility of being understood without translation.
Christopher passes the test. And so begins a friendship that will shape the rest of his life — and, eventually, this book.
Stephens’s early visits are tentative. Butler is wary, proud, and accustomed to disappointment. But slowly, over bottles of red wine and readings of Alan Hollinghurst and Edmund White, the two men settle into a rhythm: Stephens reads aloud, Butler listens, interrupts, laughs, corrects, remembers.
Sometimes he asks Stephens to read his own autobiographical essays — fragments of a life lived in secrecy, danger and occasional exhilaration.
These scenes form the emotional core of The Light of Day. They are quiet, domestic, almost mundane. Yet they carry a charge that is unmistakably political. In a world where gay men had long been forced to hide, the simple act of reading aloud becomes a kind of reclamation. It is companionship as resistance, intimacy as testimony.
Stephens writes of discovering, for the first time, what it felt like to belong to a 'tribe.' The word is striking. It suggests not only solidarity but relief — the relief of finding people who understand the contours of your life without needing them explained.
For Butler, whose youth was spent in a Britain where homosexuality was illegal, that relief had been rare. For Stephens, it arrives in the form of an older man who has lived through the worst of it and survived.
To understand Butler’s life, one must understand the world he grew up in. Homosexuality remained illegal in Britain until 1967, and the law’s hostility shaped every aspect of gay existence.
Men lived with the constant threat of police raids, public shaming, loss of employment, and imprisonment. The Wolfenden Report of 1957 recommended decriminalisation, but the government refused to act. The Homosexual Law Reform Society was founded in response, staffed largely by volunteers who risked their reputations simply by being associated with it.
It was in this climate that Butler, on 3 June 1960, joined two colleagues in writing a letter to British national newspapers including politically conservative The Spectator. It began, with startling simplicity:
'Sir, we are homosexuals…'The sentence is almost disarmingly plain. Yet its plainness is precisely what made it radical. The three men signed their real names. They did so knowing that the police could investigate them, that employers could dismiss them, that families could disown them.
It was an act of moral clarity so rare that it reads now like a flare shot up from the darkness.
Stephens and Radnofsky treat this moment not as a historical footnote but as a hinge — a point at which private suffering tipped into public courage. They show how acts of self‑declaration, so dangerous then, would become central to later movements for equality.
Butler’s letter is presented as both a personal risk and a political tactic, a gesture that looked forward to battles still decades away.
Butler’s blindness, which struck in his thirties, adds another layer of complexity to the story. It narrowed his world but sharpened his voice. He became, in effect, a writer without a readership — a man who filled notebooks, tapes and diaries with reflections on his parents, his loneliness, his friendships, his activism, and the strange, stubborn hope that carried him through the years.
When Butler died in 2011, he left all his papers to Stephens. The archive was vast, chaotic, and deeply personal. It contained not only autobiographical essays but home recordings — crackly, imperfect, sometimes moving, sometimes mundane. In one of the final recordings, Butler says he does not regret going blind because it led him to Oxford, and to Stephens.
It is a line that lands softly but stays with you.
The authors approach this archive with care, not attempting to impose a single narrative on Butler’s life but instead letting the fragments speak. The telling swings between eras — the fearful 1950s and '60s, the more permissive but still complicated early 2000s — with a looseness that feels organic rather than disorganised; a structure that mirrors how memory works: associative, wandering, occasionally contradictory.
Here, legacy media reviewers have been perceptive. Matthew Parris, writing in the Times Literary Supplement, notes that Stephens 'never entirely works out what kind of book he meant to write.' It is meant not as criticism but as praise. The book’s refusal to settle into a single genre — biography, memoir, social history, personal tribute — becomes its strength. It mirrors the very life it describes: untidy, searching, full of digressions and sudden illuminations.
One of the book’s most striking qualities is its insistence that political change is not only the work of committees and campaigns but of friendships. Stephens’s weekly visits to Butler’s home are not framed as heroic. They are ordinary acts of care.
Yet in the context of Butler’s life, they become extraordinary. They offer companionship in a world that had often denied it. They offer recognition in a world that had often refused it.
This suggests that visibility — the act of being seen — is one of the most radical experiences a person can have. Butler’s life was shaped by the danger of visibility. Stephens’s life was shaped by the relief of it. Their friendship becomes a bridge between these two realities.
Radnofsky’s contribution ensures that the story never loses sight of the broader context. She supplies the historical scaffolding — the Wolfenden Report, the founding of the Homosexual Law Reform Society, the slow path to decriminalisation — with clarity and restraint. The political never overwhelms the personal; it frames it.
Although The Light of Day is rooted in the past, it speaks directly to the present. In an era when LGBTQIA+ rights are again contested in parts of the world, Butler’s story feels less like distant history and more like a reminder of how fragile progress can be.
The account shows that liberation was not inevitable. It was built by people who risked their jobs, their reputations and their freedom simply by telling the truth.
Stephens and Radnofsky do not indulge in triumphalism. They acknowledge the reactionary undercurrents that persisted long after 1967, and the loneliness that shaped Butler’s life even in more permissive decades.
Never quite bleak it is, in its way, a celebration: of friendship, of intellectual companionship, of the small acts of loyalty that sustain a person through difficult years.
In the end, The Light of Day is about seeing and being seen. It is about the courage required to make oneself visible in a hostile world, and the quieter courage of showing up for someone who has lived too long in the dark.
It is a tribute to a man who wrote in the margins, who risked everything by signing his name, and who found, late in life, a companion willing to read him back into the world.
Stephens and Radnofsky have written a book that glows with understated grace. It does not try to dazzle. It pays attention — to a life, to a friendship, to the long, slow arc of change. And in that attention, it finds its light.
The back cover comment by Sir Ian McKellen reads: 'Your book is the "really good book. Just one" that Roger Butler would have wanted.'
I agree.
A beautiful, heartwarming read about friendship.
July 6, 2025
What an absolute joy this book was! I closed the final page with a huge smile on my face and a heart full of pride. This is more than just the story of Roger Butler—the first gay man, alongside two brave friends, to publicly come out in the iconic letter, “Sir, we are homosexuals.” It’s a radiant celebration of courage, authenticity, and the unstoppable power of living your truth.
I felt a deep connection to Roger’s journey. The book immerses you in those groundbreaking early years that sparked the movement toward decriminalisation and acceptance. It’s inspiring to see how one person’s honesty and openness helped change the world for all of us.
But what truly surprised and uplifted me was the tender way the story explores living with blindness. It brought back memories of my own family, and reminded me of the resilience and adaptability that come with facing life’s challenges—whether it’s learning to navigate the world without sight, or daring to be yourself in a world that isn’t always ready for you.
Christopher Stephens’ arrival at 41 Regent Street is the start of a beautiful adventure, filled with laughter, love, and the kind of friendship that changes lives. This book is a celebration of queer joy, chosen family, and the little moments that make life extraordinary.
Congratulations to everyone involved in this story. Thank you for sharing your light, your courage, and your love with the world. I feel so grateful and proud to be part of this vibrant, unstoppable community.
I felt a deep connection to Roger’s journey. The book immerses you in those groundbreaking early years that sparked the movement toward decriminalisation and acceptance. It’s inspiring to see how one person’s honesty and openness helped change the world for all of us.
But what truly surprised and uplifted me was the tender way the story explores living with blindness. It brought back memories of my own family, and reminded me of the resilience and adaptability that come with facing life’s challenges—whether it’s learning to navigate the world without sight, or daring to be yourself in a world that isn’t always ready for you.
Christopher Stephens’ arrival at 41 Regent Street is the start of a beautiful adventure, filled with laughter, love, and the kind of friendship that changes lives. This book is a celebration of queer joy, chosen family, and the little moments that make life extraordinary.
Congratulations to everyone involved in this story. Thank you for sharing your light, your courage, and your love with the world. I feel so grateful and proud to be part of this vibrant, unstoppable community.
April 4, 2025
It's a rare pleasure to read a book like this, written from the heart, a true labour of love. It's poignant, heartbreaking and heartwarming, and I applaud the honesty and integrity of the authors.
This is a book about a man who started a revolution. He didn't use guns and bullets, and the only armour he wore was his own belief in what he was fighting for: homosexual equality. His only weapon: words. Words that spoke up for homosexual rights at a time when homophobia was not just rife but sex between two men - even in the privacy of their own home - was an imprisonable offence. Homosexual love had to be hidden, lied about.
Roger Butler started the ball rolling for all the campaigns for gay rights that followed but his name is almost forgotten.
The book is at its best when Christopher Stephens shares memories of his time with Roger, in Oxford, when he was old and blind. A powerful evocation of friendship and love.
This is a book about a man who started a revolution. He didn't use guns and bullets, and the only armour he wore was his own belief in what he was fighting for: homosexual equality. His only weapon: words. Words that spoke up for homosexual rights at a time when homophobia was not just rife but sex between two men - even in the privacy of their own home - was an imprisonable offence. Homosexual love had to be hidden, lied about.
Roger Butler started the ball rolling for all the campaigns for gay rights that followed but his name is almost forgotten.
The book is at its best when Christopher Stephens shares memories of his time with Roger, in Oxford, when he was old and blind. A powerful evocation of friendship and love.
July 15, 2025
This review contains spoilers.
This is a book of two narratives; the first is an account of the life of Roger Butler, oneof the first gay activisits in the UK, The second is an account of Christopher Stephens who befriended Butler at the end of his life.
Butler's life is the more interesting; I'm not sure why Stephens' life is included apart from the fact of it being a 'compare and contrast' exercise. And, frankly, it would have a been a very thin book otherwise.
The one thing I took away from Butler's life was admiration as he overcame blindness to live, as far as he was able, a fulfilling life including taking a history degree at Oxford.
It is what is left unsaid that makes this book unsatisfactory. Butler's parents are a remote couple. Nothing is said about how they felt about their son's homosexuality. Butler seems to have had supportive colleagues at the upmarket estate agents where he worked in London, but this aspect of his life is glossed over.
This is a book of two narratives; the first is an account of the life of Roger Butler, oneof the first gay activisits in the UK, The second is an account of Christopher Stephens who befriended Butler at the end of his life.
Butler's life is the more interesting; I'm not sure why Stephens' life is included apart from the fact of it being a 'compare and contrast' exercise. And, frankly, it would have a been a very thin book otherwise.
The one thing I took away from Butler's life was admiration as he overcame blindness to live, as far as he was able, a fulfilling life including taking a history degree at Oxford.
It is what is left unsaid that makes this book unsatisfactory. Butler's parents are a remote couple. Nothing is said about how they felt about their son's homosexuality. Butler seems to have had supportive colleagues at the upmarket estate agents where he worked in London, but this aspect of his life is glossed over.
July 10, 2026
The story of the first man in Britain to come out as gay and who has been sadly forgotten in the years that followed is both moving and inspiring, a book all gay men should read and appreciate. Before coming out became a "thing" Roger Butler came out publicly and without shame in a world of prejudice, discrimination and threat. It was a brave and self-sacrificing act for whom millions of men since have benefitted and consequently thrived. But, in a world where hate and fear are becoming increasingly prevalent, almost the norm, this book is also a rallying call to embraced love and freedom and maintain the struggle for equality and respect for all. It is beautifully written, heartfelt and genuine. A hidden and long forgotten story that hs quite rightfully been brought into the light of day. Superb.
February 25, 2026
Really enjoyed this. As a gay man myself I knew of the various groups from the late 70s and 80s etc, walking my first Pride in London in 1995. It’s fascinating reading how things were done back in the day, but the courage to sign a public letter telling everyone you were gay in the 1960s was immense. And it started that snowball effect that ultimately brings us to where we are today - being able to live with the same equalities as others.
April 24, 2026
A fascinating history of Roger Butler, one of the almost-forgotten heroes of the gay liberation movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Told by his close friend Christopher Stephens, it draws on Butler’s letters and writings, from his coming out and activism to his own journey after losing his eyesight. At the same time, Christopher tells his own story, showing the very different experiences of being a gay man in more recent years — something made possible by activists like Butler.
August 19, 2025
This was so well done Christopher!
March 13, 2026
A fascinating read, about how “the gay rights movement caught up with Roger Butler”, perhaps “the first man to come out at the dawn of gay liberation”.
June 19, 2025
Beautifully written story of the life of Roger Butler, the first man in Britain to come out as gay, and his friendship with Christopher Stephens, whose own coming out Butler paved the way for half a century later. An effective mix of much-needed history and moving memoir.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews