Nothing Ever Just Disappears: Seven Hidden Histories

Diarmuid Hester

Aug 2023 · Random House

About this ebook

'With originality and subtlety, Diarmuid Hester examines how the gay imagination deals with place and with displacement, allowing for mystery and a kind of magic' Colm Toibin

'Hester is a fizzingly brilliant writer' Robert Macfarlane

'Haunted and haunting - totally riveting' Chris Kraus


At the turn of the century, in the shade of Cambridge's cloisters, a young E. M. Forster conceals his passion for other men, even as he daydreams about the sun-warmed bodies of ancient Greece. Under the dazzling lights of interwar Paris, Josephine Baker dances her way to fame and fortune and discovers sexual freedom backstage at the Folies Bergère. And on Jersey, in the darkest days of Nazi occupation, the transgressive surrealist Claude Cahun mounts an extraordinary resistance to save the island she loves, scattering hundreds of dissident artworks along its streets and shorelines.

Nothing Ever Just Disappears brings to life the stories of seven remarkable figures and illuminates the connections between where they lived, who they loved, and the art they created. It shows that a queer sense of place is central to the history of the twentieth century, and powerfully evokes how much is lost when queer spaces are forgotten. From the lesbian London of the suffragettes to James Baldwin's home in Provence, to Jack Smith's New York, Kevin Killian's San Francisco and the Dungeness cottage of Derek Jarman, this is a thrilling new history and a celebration of freedom, survival and the hidden places of the imagination.

About the author

Dr Diarmuid Hester is a radical cultural historian, activist and author of the critically acclaimed Wrong: A Critical Biography of Dennis Cooper. He has held research fellowships at Cambridge University, the University of Oxford, New York University, the Library of Congress, and the British Library. He is a BBC New Generation Thinker and regularly contributes to BBC Radio 3. Diarmuid teaches at the Faculty of English, University of Cambridge, and is a research associate of Emmanuel College.