‘Transfigured by the setting’

Catherine Taylor admires this idiosyncratic account of how four gay men found sanctuary in rural Wales

OON THE RED HILL by Mike Parker 416pp, William Heinemann, £16.99, ebook £9.99

n the Red Hill, Mike Parker’s intense, fascinating account of queer lives in rural Wales over almost five decades, is centred on one place, Rhiw Goch, or “Red Hill”, an “undistinguished” 18th-century farmhouse outside the small market town of Machynlleth, in Powys, whose “transfiguration comes from the setting”. In 2011, in an extraordinary act of friendship, its then owners, two elderly men, bequeathed the house to Parker and his partner Peredur. As a tribute to them, Parker tells the story of their enduring relationship, and in doing so holds a mirror up to the often hidden gay lives of the past century.

Reg Mickisch and George Walton, originally from London, were an openly gay couple who moved to Montgomeryshire in 1972, after Reg inherited a small sum on his father’s death. Before that, they lived in Bournemouth, where gay life flourished, despite the draconian laws still in place. George ran a photographic studio, Reg worked in menswear for a department store. The pair even bought a house together.

Why did they leave? Like Parker, who explains his own early feelings of restlessness, the couple, especially the older, more dominant George, had a vision of “a manly pied-à-terre, remote and self-sufficient, smelling of leather and books,” as Parker puts it. It was a brave decision. Even after the decriminalisation of homosexuality in July 1967, Wales was not the most obvious choice for a gay couple. But Parker argues that Reg and George were already so exotic to the locals simply by being from England that their queerness was just an added element.

In early February 2006, two months after the first civil partnerships took place in the United Kingdom, George and Reg underwent their own legal ceremony, “together long enough to go from being outlawed by the state to being married by one of its officials”. Parker and Peredur were the sole witnesses. George and Reg were 89 and 79 respectively, and had been together for 62 years.

In 2011, they died in the same care home, leaving Rhiw Goch to Peredur and Parker, their perceived natural inheritors, in a (much less fraught) trajectory of legacy reminiscent of that which lies at the heart of E M Forster’s Howards End. That novel is a conscious reference for Parker, along with Forster’s posthumously published queer love story, Maurice. (Forster is foremost among a heady number of writers, mainly gay, jostling the pages here, from Gerard Manley Hopkins to James Baldwin, Alan Hollinghurst and Bruce Chatwin.)

With the inheritance and renovation of Rhiw Goch comes an apotheosis for Parker. A selfdescribed “gobby gay Brummie”, with a love of literature and strong sense of himself as an outsider searching for emotional and geographical attachment, he immerses himself in Reg and George’s diaries, photographs, holiday slides, letters, books and memorabilia. These form the bedrock of On the Red Hill, which is structured into four quarters, encompassing the four seasons, elements, points of the compass, and histories of each man at Rhiw Goch: Reg, George, then Parker himself, and Peredur.

The result, in prose as swooping as the birds that teem about the house, is an important study of everyday gay life before and after decriminalisation. It is also (for Parker is nothing if not ambitious) an intimate account of the stunning natural beauty of this part of Wales, and its proud history. Nearby, in 1404, Owain Glyndŵr, who led the revolt against Henry IV, was crowned Prince of Wales, the last Welshman to hold that title. The idea of self-determination, whether personal or national, runs through this book.

Parker has become a Cymro o ddewis – a Welshman by choice – much more so than Reg and George, who never learnt Welsh, despite it being the first language of most of their neighbours. Nevertheless, despite a few run-ins early on, when George

On the Red Hill is an important study of gay life before and after decriminalisation