Leeds-born author's book Odd Men Out on gay history explores Wolfenden Report and has Simon Callow introduction

Joyce has drawn on medical data and opinion polls, broadcast recordings, theatrical productions, and extensive interviews to catalogue the repression of gay people, detailing laws against homosexual activity and the use of brutal medical 'treatments' - and how people battled against such ills.

But a major part of his motivation was to preserve the voices of a disappearing generation of people who transformed what it meant to be a gay man in 20th century Britain.

“I interviewed, along the way, so many people - some well-known, some not well-known - and even 15 years ago, they were beginning to get quite old. Many of them have died since then,” says Joyce, who grew up in Horsforth.

“I did think it was important to get their voices out and heard and read. So now that the book’s finally come out, to preserve those voices, the voices of people, as I said, who are no longer with us, I just feel it's like a little mission, I suppose.”

Joyce made use of material already on public record, finding a sound archive at the British Library particularly useful, but he also wanted to track down writers, actors and others who were not necessarily in the public eye, and often it was very difficult. He got in touch with mutual contacts and searched online, while putting the word out at public organisations, and many replied.

One was a Leeds man, who still lives in the Yorkshire region, Joyce describes as the “crowning achievement” of his searches.

Joyce was at the London School of Economics, exploring the files on local groups in an archive which had belonged to the old Homosexual Law Reform Society. There were two files, one a letter from the man asking the organisation for advice on setting up a social group for gay men in 1968, and the other a set of minutes from when he visited for a meeting to discuss the idea with his policeman boyfriend - which “astonished me,” says Joyce.

“I just thought I thought it was quite a bold, brave thing to do, because I had the idea that gay men in Leeds in 1968, especially policemen, would keep a very low profile, but it seemed that they didn't at all. So I was very intrigued to find out what happened to these two.”

The officer had since died, but through cross-examining internet and phone records, Joyce traced an address for the man and, finding nobody home one day, left a note through the door. He got a call back from him that day, and he was happy to talk all about those years.

The social club, though, was never set up because the legalities were “just too complex and too risky,” says Joyce.

In 1957, the Wolfenden Report recommended “homosexual behaviour between consenting adults in private should no longer be considered a criminal offence”, however it was another decade before homosexuality was even partially decriminalised - and then it had to be in private and was permitted only for those aged 21 or over.

The report also led, in Joyce’s analysis, to what he describes as the ‘Wolfenden Man’.

“They were sort of holding their nose a little bit against this stink of vice and sexuality,” says Joyce.

“They were okay at decriminalising the whole thing, just within certain limits. And I think what they were aiming for, or what they were looking at, were respectable well brought-up, discreet, largely middle class homosexuals. And that's why I coined the term Wolfenden Man. It’s like, sexual freedom was okay, as long as you sort of conform to that model.”

As society changed in the 1960s, though, ironically the stigma once visited on more visibly gay people could then be experienced by the ‘Wolfenden Man’ who were at pains to appear more ‘respectable’.

Joyce says: “It became quite acceptable, even desirable to be a bit way out, a little bit anti-conformist and anti-traditional. In a strange sort of way that late 60s, early 70s hippieish, kind of revolutionary camp look became more acceptable because it was also adopted by heterosexual people. It's almost like there's a switch. So gay men were seen as okay if they were like that. Whereas the old Wolfenden Man, once they'd managed to convince their peers that they were respectable, et cetera, they sort of became the odd men out, in a way, because they were not visibly gay. By the 70s you get this determinist identity - you're gay, you're more expected to be flamboyant, and a bit outrageous, and anti-conformist and camp. If you weren't, you weren't so easily identifiable as gay and you were sort of a little bit suspect.” He adds: “Men who were homosexual but didn't represent themselves as being ‘classically gay' were distrusted by the gay community because they seemed perhaps closeted or not quite joining the community. And also, I think people in straight society also saw them as a bit difficult to put their finger on - ‘what are they?’”

Despite all the repression they encountered, Joyce says he found there was a “general sense of acceptance” about gay people in West Yorkshire, particularly in Leeds, and a sympathetic scene happening in the city. “There seems to have been, under the radar, a very lively, supportive community of gay men. And that surprised me a little bit because you get this idea that it was all a bit dark and dangerous and depressing in those days, but that’s not the impression I got from reading sources and talking to people . Quite the contrary.”