Naked Civil Servant: Queer Sex, Catholicism and Conformism in the Post-War London Diaries of George Lucas

Janes, Dominic

Abstract

The minutely documented diaries of an ‘everyman’ such as George Lucas enable us to view the complex pleasures and challenging realities of the postwar queer quotidian in remarkable detail. A sample of the years after 1957, when Lucas was aged in his thirties, suggests that more attention needs to be paid to age-differential relationships and to the problematic aspects of the sexual idolisation of young men. Lucas’s respectably boring career and Catholic faith can, however, be understood as having provided the stability on which his emotional survival depended. Other such unglamorous queer lives can now be viewed with greater empathy.

Citation

Janes, D. (2023). Naked Civil Servant: Queer Sex, Catholicism and Conformism in the Post-War London Diaries of George Lucas. History Workshop Journal, 96, 25–45. https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/dbad014

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 4, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Oct 10, 2023
• Publication Date: Oct 10, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 11, 2025
• Journal: History Workshop Journal
• Print ISSN: 1363-3554
• Electronic ISSN: 1477-4569
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 96
• Article Number: dbad014
• Pages: 25–45
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/dbad014
• Keywords: History and Philosophy of Science, History