LGBT Brighton & Hove

LGBT Brighton & Hove is an exploration of the development of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender community from its earliest accessible beginnings. As well as the personal memories and experience of local LGBT people, the book includes accounts from the History Centre's comprehensive archives while literature is used to inform a representative sample of stories of the area's prominent LGBT writers, artists, musicians and philanthropists from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to the present day. There are accounts of prominent court cases, of wartime, and of mid and late twentieth century events, memories and personal experience. The book shows how LGBT people strove to 'make change happen' both individually and through forming organisations for mutual support and with specific aims. Later chapters draw on the personal stories of local people, including 'Coming Out', 'Civil Marriages' and the progress of 'Brighton Pride' from its difficult, political beginnings in the early nineties, to the celebration of today, attracting both goodwill and visitors from all over the world. There is still some way to go for LGBT people and the issues that still affect them - even in Brighton and Hove - but Gay Brighton is an encouraging reflection on the change and progress that has already been achieved.