
Marriages of love and convenience: The French dating market and the revolution of romantic love (19th-20th century)

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Front page of advertisement pamphlet for the ‘Booster’, 1935.











When the Wolfenden Report was published 68 years ago this week, it pushed for decriminalising male homosexuality – but it also led to a crackdown on sex workers. Sir John Wolfenden was unprepared for the backlash that his dry, academic 155-page government report would provoke. “All sorts of people said all sorts of things, and all sorts of people wrote all sorts of things on the pavement outside our house,” he told BBC radio. “I have from one religious sect an official curse. Typed.” He was surprised by how “violent” the press reaction was: “I didn’t expect it to make as much splash as it did.”

















Women leading a boycott procession while holding the provisional national flag





Waltzing Matilda, opened in the late 1950s in Tsim Sha Tsui, is believed to be Hong Kong’s first gay bar – but that was never the plan.







