Paul Bailey is the author of At the Jerusalem, Trespasses, An English Madam: The Life and Work of Cynthia Payne, and Gabriel's Lament, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1986. His latest book is Three Queer Lives (Hamish Hamilton).

"I was possessed occasionally of the vain hope that I would awake one morning with a burning passion for girls, but that bright day, alas, was not to dawn. I continued to wander in what the beetroot-complexioned hacks of the popular press, acting as the nation's moral arbiters, labelled the 'twilight world' - a dark and eerie region inhabited exclusively by men who lusted after each other."