The Secret Public: How LGBTQ Resistance Shaped Popular Culture (1955–1979)

Dazzling . . . The Secret Public reads like the book [Savage] was born to write . . . It's hard to imagine another writer doing it better.

Kaleidoscopic . . . So much spine, spunk and guts . . . Thrilling and nourishing.

Erudite . . . A meticulously researched tome . . . Savage’s central achievement is to wear all his knowledge lightly, to tell us these stories as easily and engagingly as if we were stood in line with him, waiting to go into a gig . . . You alway feels he is in command of his subject.

Magisterial . . . In an overcrowded field, he is the essential and pre-eminent British writer on pop culture and pop art . . . The Secret Public might be the book he was born to write.

Superb.

Wonderful . . . Impressive not only in its scope and detail but also in its subtlety . . . Savage has been a consistently lively and engaging writer on pop culture for near on fifty years. Yet nothing prepared me for the sheer amount of detail in his new book . . . As a chronicle of the ways that LGBTQ performers shaped Anglo-American pop music, The Secret Public can surely have no peers.