Love from the Pink Palace: Memories of Love, Loss and Cabaret through the AIDS Crisis, for fans of IT'S A SIN

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I laughed and cried like a baby, and was transported back to a time of innocence, clouded by the enormity of the harsh reality . Growing up through the 80’s I witnessed the war years and this book takes me right back to the time and london. Their stories now do not only live in the fictional characters of Ritchie, Ash, Colin, Roscoe and Gregory but in full, never-to-be-forgotten technicolour in the pages of Love From the Pink Palace. What this book is about, if it is about any one thing in particular, is recognising what life was like for the first generation of men in London, and other world capitals, who both 'came out' when young-close to the age that their heterosexual equivalents had their first relationships-and contracted A. The love that shines through on every page of this book as Jill describes her life growing up in London, working in the theatre and West End, with a bunch of beautiful boys who made her laugh and whom she cared about deeply, is immense.

S. when the disease was new, had no cure, and invoked an utterly freezing lack of empathy from society, along with the lack of information about the disease.But the inability to suppress same sex desire is more complex than either parent or young man can understand, but the young men at least try to understand-and create a model that other young men in less open circumstances may try to adapt.

From 1985 onward Jill Nalder talked in her phrase 'liked a cracked record' to describe the frequency of her advice to the young gay men who were her friends about the necessity of safer sex practices, as they were commonly understood.But soon rumours were spreading from America about a frightening illness being dubbed the ‘gay flu’, and Jill and her friends – spirited Juan Pablo, Jae with his beautiful voice, upbeat Dursley, and many others – found that their formerly carefree existence now under threat. In particular, one of Jill’s fallen friends tried everything to survive until they were drugs available to control the HIV virus – they very sadly did not but did inspire others to fight on. The author is a talented heterosexual woman whose talent for writing songs, singing and performing for the public put her in contact with a society of selectively extrovert gay men and drag artists who wanted nothing more in life than to be on the stage, men who wanted to live their whole lives to be part of a distinctly extrovert, well performed, stagecraft.

The book is part career CV where names of different shows and different songs in them are dropped as if we should know them all.I had no idea who anyone was, and so I didn’t feel much connection to the author or the stories she was telling. The confidence the young gay men hid a weakness where they believed they were good listeners, because they were clever and they were good learners.

Author Jill Nalder is the inspiration behind the character of Jill in It's A Sin (a brilliant show if you haven't seen it), and that's how I found out about this book and knew I needed to read it. The frequent mention of so many show tunes and musicals through out the book could have been the lyrics of a list song to me. I think I went into this with the wrong expectations, and also I think this is for people who are very into the theatre musical scene. They could recognise throughout human history sex had been the cause for so much rumour, denial, anger, shame, and secrecy etc, treachery even. Every chapter made you think about how hard it must have been for all those poor men who not only had to deal with coming out in a very unforgiving world, but to also tell their family and friends that they were dying of AIDS.I cannot help but salute the humane and non-judgemental centre of this book, where perhaps to be that close, and to be that observant of the new gay community in action required the observer to be heterosexual and female. I highly recommend this book - it's beautifully written, brings people who should be alive and performing today back to life in a lovely way, and educates the reader brilliantly about a scary time in the world. The shrouding of queer history by the British government, particulary of the AIDS crisis during the reign of Section 28 means that many of the younger LGBTQIA+ generation are left with very little knowledge of what happened from 1986-2003. Hotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's pageview limit. Considering the work involved, the is little in the book about her role in West End Cares, her legendary cabaret fundraisers, and the thousands raised for the Crusaid hardship fund.