THE LOST BOYS

THE LOST BOYS 

The other evening with time to spare before a supper date I went into the Salisbury Pub on St Martins Lane. I had not been inside for forty or so years. A warm summer’s morning, with a gaggle of friends making a weekend of it.

I remember going down stairs to the Gents and then finding an well dressed city-type in the stall next to mine trying to open up a conversation. I fled upstairs in panic; much to the myth of my friends. 

Forty years on on a Friday evening the Salisbury was packed as I made this drawing. A delightful American couple made a fuss when leaving the table next to mine anxious not to jog my hand. And to my left three Irish boys were keen to see my output.

The Salisbury was well known as a gay-friendly pub from Oscar Wilde's time up until the mid-1980s. The 1961 British suspense film Victim, directed by Basil Dearden and starring Dirk Bogarde and Sylvia Syms, includes scenes inside and outside The Salisbury and was the first English language film to use the word "homosexual".

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