From Shame to Pride

RADIO 4, 9.30PM

The Scottish crime writer Val Mcdermid, who is in a long-term same-sex relationship, presents the first in a two-part series about the history of homosexual love in Britain. Mcdermid has a formidable intellect and an ear for a great story, and both are put to good use here as she examines stories from the Renaissance to the present, including tales of London’s 18th-century molly-houses, of the horrific punishments for homosexuality, and of the Yorkshire gentlewoman Anne Lister’s passionate affairs with women in the Georgian age.