"Writing these pieces helped me to come to terms with things - with my own interest in secret, erotic energy (Roger Casement and Thomas Mann), my pure admiration for figures who, unlike myself, weren't afraid (Wilde, Bacon, Almodovar), my abiding fascination with sadness (Elizabeth Bishop, James Baldwin) and, indeed, tragedy (Thomas Gunn and Mark Doty)."
Colm Tóibín looks at the life and work of some of the greatest and most influential artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, figures in the main whose homosexuality remained hidden or oblique for much of their lives. Either by choice or necessity, being gay seemed to come second for many of these writers. Yet in their private lives, and also in the spirit of their work, the laws of desire changed everything for them and made all the difference.
