The Dilly: A History of Piccadilly Rent Boys

by Jeremy Reed

A previously undocumented slice of London's underground sexual history, and its influence upon artists from Oscar Wilde to Francis Bacon and the Stones to Morrissey Piccadilly Circus has long been London's principal location for selling sex and this is the first book to really explore the history of male prostitution at "The Dilly." Dating from Oscar Wilde's notorious use of the location for pick-ups through to Francis Bacon's equal attraction to rough trade and right up to recent history, this is a pioneering piece of counterculture history. Employing a flair for acute visual imagery, the author maps out Soho's submerged gay clubs and drinking-rooms in the decades before de-criminalization. This is followed by the new masculinity advocated by the Mod look in the 1960s, the influence of the place on rock and pop stars such as the Stones, Marc Almond, and Morrissey (all of whom themed songs on the subject) and the book closes in the 1990s, when online male escorts replaced rent boys on the Piccadilly railing. An exhilaratingly colorful recreation of the illegal occupation of one of London'’s central commercial zones by lawless Dilly boys, this history is augmented by first-hand interviews with rent boys who worked the meat-rack in the 1970s as well as a chapter recording the author's personal friendship with the artist Francis Bacon.

Genres: Nonfiction

330 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2014

Reviews

[Lesley]

Two chronological misfires in the first 20 pages did not really prepossess me. But I persisted, although there were other errors. Plus, the book did not seem to have been copy-edited or proof-read. Not sure I can give it a star score: it's more of a personal account/vision, and has unreliable narrator problems, but there is material of interest in it.

[Christopher Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely nothing short of BRILLIANT ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

[Alan Grosenheider · Rating 5 out of 5]

Queer histories are so often invisible even when it happens in plain sight. Unfortunately, and painfully ironically, it is when it becomes visible by what Derek Jarman called "HeteroSoc" that it was [and, is, in some locales today] policed which in turn produces documents [arrest records, trial transcriptions, newspaper articles, etc.] that are left to be discovered and analyzed.

The Dilly: A History of Piccadilly Rent Boys by Jeremy Reed covers the entire history of the Dilly and the clandestine same-sex desire that has occurred there over the centuries but with special attention to the more famous clients of the last century: such as Oscar Wilde, Wm.S. Burroughs, and Francis Bacon.

The histories are interspersed with interviews with rent and personal reminiscences [the author was rent while studying poetry at university].

The text is peppered with references to songs, so I created a playlist as I read and added a few more that reference London, the Dilly, Polari, and, obviously, rent:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/14Y...