A Secret Between Gentlemen: Faith and Desire (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781764487856)

A Secret Between Gentlemen: Faith and Desire is the third volume of the unique A Secret Between Gentlemen historical and biographical trilogy. It casts devotional light upon a handful of extraordinary homosexual clergymen who hallowed, or otherwise, the Victorian landscape, and whom are now almost forgotten.

These gentlemen are the Reverends Joseph Leycester Lyne, Robert Eyton, Francis George Widdows, Arthur Trewman, John Gwyon, John Henry Daine, Francis George Widdows, and not least Robert Charles Fillingham, whose 186 volumes of unpublished diaries are here accessed to provide a fascinating window into his life and times. This includes a unique first person account of his trial in 1886 for homosexual offences. As he wrote:

"I could not realise that it was other than a dream. It was someone else getting up this dreadful morning with a sick heart: someone else going up silent and bewildered to a court of justice: someone else standing as a criminal in the dock: someone else noting, with horror, that all eyes were fixed with cold curiosity or amusement upon him - and I was a spectator of it also. I had, indeed, hard work to realise its reality."

The second half of this volume is devoted to two rare and hitherto unpublished tracts that will be of interest to scholars of Victorian sexuality.

This is the seventh edition, and is available in hardback only.