Love, Leda
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Author: Mark Hyatt
This newly discovered, never-before-published novel – which predates the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 – is a portrait of a lost Soho, as well as a document of queer, working-class life, from a voice long overlooked. Leda is lost. Bouncing from job to job, from coffee bar to house party, he spends his days watching the hours pass and waiting for the night to arrive. Trysts in the rubble of a bombsite follow hours in bedsits with near strangers, as Leda is forced to find intimacy in unusual places. Semi-homeless and estranged from his given family, he relies on the support of his chosen one: a community of older gay men and divorced women who feed and clothe him, gently encouraging him to find a foothold in a society which excludes him at every turn. And then there is Daniel, a buttoned-up man of the Lord, for whom Leda nurses an unrequited obsession – one which sends him spiralling into self-destruction.'It’s mid morning. Cool. Not many coffee bars open. I, the brave one, god of any telephone kiosk, walk down Dean Street, see the man of the day; raincoat, shoulders round, hair black, falling out; heavenly blue eyes cast down into his own hell. Bold as brass I cross the road stopping dead in front of him. He raises his eyes, so sadly that I love him for it.'Mark Hyatt was born in South London in 1940, and died by suicide outside Blackburn in 1972. His selected poems, 'So Much For Life', edited by Sam Ladkin and Luke Roberts, is forthcoming with Nightboat Books (2023). Hyatt received little or no formal education, and learned to read and write as an adult. Love, Leda (c. 1965) is his only known novel.Foreword by Huw LemmeyNote on author and text by Luke Roberts
ISBN 9781913512217. Peninsula Press. pb. 176 pages. 19.7 x 12.8 cm.
available
This newly discovered, never-before-published novel – which predates the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 – is a portrait of a lost Soho, as well as a document of queer, working-class life, from a voice long overlooked. Leda is lost. Bouncing from job to job, from coffee bar to house party, he spends his days watching the hours pass and waiting for the night to arrive. Trysts in the rubble of a bombsite follow hours in bedsits with near strangers, as Leda is forced to find intimacy in unusual places. Semi-homeless and estranged from his given family, he relies on the support of his chosen one: a community of older gay men and divorced women who feed and clothe him, gently encouraging him to find a foothold in a society which excludes him at every turn. And then there is Daniel, a buttoned-up man of the Lord, for whom Leda nurses an unrequited obsession – one which sends him spiralling into self-destruction.'It’s mid morning. Cool. Not many coffee bars open. I, the brave one, god of any telephone kiosk, walk down Dean Street, see the man of the day; raincoat, shoulders round, hair black, falling out; heavenly blue eyes cast down into his own hell. Bold as brass I cross the road stopping dead in front of him. He raises his eyes, so sadly that I love him for it.'Mark Hyatt was born in South London in 1940, and died by suicide outside Blackburn in 1972. His selected poems, 'So Much For Life', edited by Sam Ladkin and Luke Roberts, is forthcoming with Nightboat Books (2023). Hyatt received little or no formal education, and learned to read and write as an adult. Love, Leda (c. 1965) is his only known novel.Foreword by Huw LemmeyNote on author and text by Luke Roberts
ISBN 9781913512217. Peninsula Press. pb. 176 pages. 19.7 x 12.8 cm.
available