James Cahill and Christopher Stephens in conversation with A J West

Art critic and novelist James Cahill and academic and writer Christopher Stephens look back at Oxford’s gay past including life as a gay man in Oxford at the beginning of this century and the story of gay rights activist and former Oxford student, Roger Butler, the first man to come out publicly as gay seven years before decriminalisation. They are in conversation with award-winning BBC broadcaster A J West.

Cahill is a research fellow in classics at King’s College London and has written on art and worked in art galleries. He is author of two novels, Tiepolo Blue and The Violet Hour. He arrived in Oxford as a gay man in 2003 around the time of the repeal of Section 28 and equalisation of the age of consent. These events are depicted in both of his novels. He will talk about his experiences of gay life at that time and how it has filtered into his fiction.

Stephens is head of Southlands College and a reader in theology at the University of Roehampton. He arrived in Oxford around the same period and, at the age of 21, he found himself acting as a volunteer reader to a gay blind man in his 60s, Roger Butler. In The Light of Day, he describes their friendship and how, when Butler died, he inherited a lifetime of his writings. He tells Butler’s story, including his contribution to gay rights, and how he discovered the letter Butler wrote to several newspapers in 1960 declaring himself to be homosexual.

Discussions are chaired by A J West, an award-winning BBC broadcaster who has interviewed figures such as Tom Hanks and Sir Tony Blair and who is author of two bestselling historical fiction novels, The Spirit Engineer and The Betrayal of Thomas True. His first non-fiction work, How Queer Bookshops Changed The World, is published in May.

This event lasts one hour 15 minutes and includes a glass of wine.