Book launch with Tash Walker & Adam Zmith -The Log Books : Voices of Queer Britain and the Helpline that Listened

A queer social history book launch and discussion with the authors of The Log Books, an intimate history of LGBTQ+ life over four decades, discovered in a stash of forgotten, handwritten notes.

In a crawlspace at the offices of Switchboard, a queer helpline in operation since 1974, lies dozens of log books kept by volunteers describing the phone calls they had taken: a teenager whose parents had kicked them out of home for dressing as the wrong gender; a lesbian terrified of having her baby taken away from her; a man arrested for chatting up another man in a public toilet; a young person wanting to know how to come out. These logs were traces of tens of thousands of queer lives, a bridge to a past hidden from people like Tash Walker and Adam Zmith in their youth, captured by people who lent an ear to those in need.