INFORMATION
- Issue #39
- 15p
- 20 pages
- 31 January – 13 February 1974
- W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
The Man, The Mask & The Writer
A Centennial Examination
- Editor: Denis Lemon
- News Editor: Michael Moore
- Reporter-at-large: Bill Lemmer
- Contributing Editor (Features): Roger Baker
- Art Director: Jean-Claude Thevenin
- Advertising/Circulation Manager: Peter Mundy
- Business Manager: Stuart Patterson
- Admin Assistant, Subscriptions, Box Replies, Listings: Anne Elizabeth
- Typesetting, Art Assistant: Sandi Rutenberg
- Regular Contributors: Sean Aubrey, Barry Conley, Denis Cohn, Brian Dax, Richard Thomson, Iain Finlayson, Jackie Forster, John Gough, Carl Hill, Howard Llewellyn, John Montgomery, Rictor Norton, David Seligman, Pete Wicker and Ian Dunn (Scottish correspondent)
- A puzzle, as gay guests of Her Majesty at HM Prisons Maidstone and Camp Hill have tried to subscribe to the newspaper and have been stopped from doing so. The governors deny responsibility, the prison service deny it too. It looks like “someone senior” at the Home Office has intervened.
Meanwhile, Jennifer Justice continues to prowl the gay world. Good news: gay-friendly nightclub Chaguaramas keeps its licence despite a campaign to close it; the novel Street Boy Swinging London by Richard Green is not obscene; 18 Chicago cops get sent down for extorting protection money from gay bars; and Michael Moores, who was accused of ‘obstructing a footpath’ by walking past the Coleherne, was freed by magistrates who thought the police were being ludicrous. Bad news: a crackdown on homosexuality in Austria sees local police arresting everybody in or near a cruising area, then raiding a pub and arresting anybody who was “obviously” gay; and Mitcham police in London have decided to ‘clean up’ the cottages on their patch, arresting virtually any man unfortunate enough to need a pee.
Reviews include the films Enter the Dragon and The Satanic Rites of Dracula, Danny La Rue at the Prince of Wales Theatre and the novel The Ladies of Llangollen by Elizabeth Mavor.
- Sisters Claim Back Lesbos: Hundreds of European lesbians plan to liberate the island of Lesbos from the heterosexual bosses of Greek government. The campaign aims to establish a “Lesbian Republic”. Lesbos was the island home of Sappho, famous gay poetess of ancient Greece. – page 5