Question for AJ Hall

[anstruther.livejournal.com]

I recently discovered the Trennels community and through it, the two posts you published in December 2003 following Antonia Forest's death.

Firstly, thank you for the posts. Antonia Forest's books have had, and continue to have, a huge influence on me and your posts captured much of what I feel about her books. She was an amazing writer.

Secondly, I hope you don't mind but I have a question relating to the second post. Reading through the list of "firsts" (and mentally checking them off against my own list) the following caught my eye:

Male homosexuality treated as romance and with authorial approval (see previous entry)

I couldn't remember off the top of my head an AF book which expressly featured male homosexuality, let alone with authorial approval, and on going back to your first post I couldn't find the relevant reference. Would you be so very kind as to put me out of my misery and let me know which relationship you were referring to? Without going back through the books, the only modern day possibility I came up with was the Cricket Term reference to the homosexuality in The Mask of Apollo (though I'm never sure what Nicola thinks about homosexuality, based on the "grotty" thought bubble). The Players books offer Humfrey Danvers' unrequited feelings for Nicholas and Christopher Marlowe's somewhat dubious motives for taking Nicholas to London but these aren't really romances, and I'm not clued up enough on the Essex/Southampton dynamic to know if we were being shown a relationship (all wives aside). Unless perhaps you meant that AF treats Humfrey's feelings as romantic? Goes without saying (I hope) that I have no issues with male romance or that I would even begin to imagine AF disapproving of a male romance.

All offers of enlightenment gratefully received, and not just from AJ Hall, natch...