AGAINST THE LAW.

Peter Wildeblood Weidendeld and Nicolson, London, 1955. 189 pp.

In January 1954, journalist Peter Wildeblood (along with Lord Montagu of Beaulieu and his cousin) was arrested. for 'corrupting' two very un-innocent servicemen. Their spectacular trial highlighted England's late anti-homosexual furore, and resulted on one year to 19 month sentences for each. The term served being customarily shorter then the sentence, Wildeblood spent a year at Wormwood Scrubbs (like novelist Rupert Croft-Cooke, earlier tried on a remarkably similar charge).

This book (which has sold well in England and should easily justify an American edition) is Wildeblood's own account of his trial, imprisonment and the resultant crystalizing of his thoughts about himself as a homosexu-

al. It is one of those rare volumes every homosexual ought to read, and then pass on to friends or relatives.

(A few years ago, a young invert, hoping to discover from books what sort of creature he might be, had poor pickings KrafftEbing's waxworks and other dated 'scientific' tomes, warped by Freudian dogmatics, a'few silly novels, a lot of pornography, hasty pudding from fatuous doctors and divines, the inevitable and inadequate lives of Wilde, the hard-to-find Victorian writings of Symonds and Carpenter and perhaps bits from Gide, Mann or Proust but nowhere a suitable guide to making the best of life as a homosexual.

(This situation has notably improved with the advent of Kinsey, Barr, Cory, Garland, Westwood, Bailey, West and now Wildeblood who will shortly add a second book.)

AGAINST THE LAW compares well with Croft-Cooke's VERDICT OF YOU ALL (reviewed here, Oct. 55). Croft-Cooke's novelistic skill gives his book more dramatic flair (and more engrossing depiction of fellow inmates) but his manner was at best prissy, and he lacked the candor (a lack shared with almost any other English or American writer who may happen to be homosexual) to say as Wildeblood does:

'I am a homosexual. It is easy for me to make that admission now, because much of my private life has already been made public by the newspapers. I am in the rare, and perhaps privileged, position of having nothing left to hide. My only concern is that some good may come at last out of so much evil. . . .I do not pity myself, and I do not ask for pity. If there is bitterness in this book, I hope it will be the bitterness of medicine, not of poison.

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