Whenever someone asks me what I write, I usually reply ‘queer fiction’ and people usually nod politely and leave it at that. But it sometimes leaves me wondering what I mean by it, and whether it’s how I actually want to be considered as a writer. I’m a gay man, so one could argue that…

There weren’t many books in the house I grew up in. I remember the Pears Cyclopædia, 1926 edition, we’d inherited from my grandma, which taught me 101 uses for baking soda as well as the flags of the British Empire. Plus, it had an atlas showing most of the world coloured pink. But other than…