Skip to main content
Poignant meditation on the ‘squalid and precious’ experiences of sex, identity and loss

Desire: A Memoir
by Jonathan Dollimore
(Bloomsbury, £19.99)

IN JONATHAN DOLLIMORE'S unflinching memoir, the writer, academic and cultural critic deals openly with issues of sexual identity, lost love and the gay sub-cultures of the 1970s to the 1990s.

It begins with a poignant vignette in which Dollimore, a teenage boy from a working-class background, sees his mother in her car with an adult friend of the family who is trying to have sex with her — a man who'd also been having sex with him, “teaching” him to desire.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
boix
Letters from Latin America / 6 May 2025
6 May 2025

A novel by Argentinian Jorge Consiglio, a personal dictionary by Uruguayan Ida Vitale, and poetry by Mexican Homero Aridjis

Letters from Latin America / 7 April 2025
7 April 2025
Travelogue/reportage by Argentinean Maria Sonia Cristoff, and poetry by Peruvian Gaston Fernandez and Puerto Rican Cristina Perez Diaz
Letters from Latin America / 4 March 2025
4 March 2025
A pamphlet by British Latinx poet Patrick Romero McCafferty, poetry by Anglo-Argentinian  Miguel Cullen, and a book of conjuring poems by Mexican Pedro Serrano
Best of 2024: Letters from Latin America / 6 December 2024
6 December 2024
LEO BOIX selects the best books of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction written by Latinx and Latin American authors published this year
Similar stories
Letters from Latin America / 7 April 2025
7 April 2025
Travelogue/reportage by Argentinean Maria Sonia Cristoff, and poetry by Peruvian Gaston Fernandez and Puerto Rican Cristina Perez Diaz
LABORATORY OF BULLYING: A scene from Ken Loach's Kes
Books / 27 March 2025
27 March 2025
JOHN GREEN recommends an entertaining, if harsh and instructive, study of bullying, discipline and power dynamics in schools and at work
Letters from Latin America / 14 October 2024
14 October 2024
Mexican Yuri Herrera’s novel about Benito Juarez in New Orleans, and poetry by Mexican Fabio Morabito and Argentine Sergio Chejfec
ART EVERYWHERE: A mural by GDR artist Martin Schmidt on the
Book Review / 23 May 2024
23 May 2024
JENNY FARRELL welcomes that rare thing - an authentic account of life East Germany that is both gripping as a novel and politically sentient