A Queer Scrapbook: Britain and Ireland since 1945
Justin Bengry, Matt Cook, Rebecca Jennings, E-J Scott, eds, A Queer Scrapbook: Britain and Ireland since 1945 (Manchester University Press, 2026).
A Queer Scrapbook offers a treasure trove of LGBTIQ+ histories from across Britain and Ireland. Packed with materials, from interviews and newspaper articles to photographs and flyers, the book explores urban, rural and regional queer life since 1945.
Commentaries and short essays introduce a changing queer landscape, spotlighting four broad themes: home and family, socialising and sex, arts and culture, and activism and community. The book delves into the meaning and experiences of domesticity and parenting and explores the sometimes unexpected places LGBTIQ+ people met to have fun. It examines the importance of creative work and shows how people fought injustice and advocated for equal rights.
Collecting has been a way for the marginalised to explore and assert identity and community. A queer scrapbook vividly illustrates the diversity of queer and trans lives across the British and Irish isles since the Second World War.
‘Queer life bursts from these pages, messy and touching and grubby and gorgeous. The voices of A queer scrapbook have something urgent to say to everyone: it’s a treasure trove of historical sources and community across time, and it will hold you as you hold it.’
Kit Heyam, author of Before We Were Trans‘Leaps energetically from moment to moment, place to place – a book as delightfully idiosyncratic as queer and trans history itself.’
Morgan M. Page, author and activist‘Queer history is often about lives lived in the margins: notes scrawled on scraps of paper, homemade zines, blurry Polaroids and photocopied posters. A queer scrapbook is an ode to this history, an authoritative and comprehensive collection of queer life in Britain over the past eighty years. More than this, it’s a love letter to the real queer people of Britain, not just the celebrities or the uber rich. Everyday people who built their own communities from scratch, despite incredible hardship. This book will make you happy, will make you proud, not in a fluffy corporate way, but in seeing real queer people changing the world – one flyer, Post-it note or cartoon strip at a time.’
Sacha Coward, author of Queer as Folklore
Project Details
Category
Publications & Research
Date
February 2026
Client
Manchester University Press