The Love That Dares

Letters of LGBTQ+ Love & Friendship Through History

By: Rachel Smith, Barbara Vesey, Mark Gatiss - foreword

Narrated by: Alice Duggan, Callum Kenny, Emma Llewellyn, Emma Watts, George Brooker, Isobel Sheene, Jennifer Tyler, Jessica Hayles, Kit Griffiths, Kwaku Osei-Afrifa, Louisa Johnson, Nicholas Dunn, Pallavi Ahluwalia, Parker Sawyers, Robert Hands

A good love letter can speak across centuries and reassure us that the agony and the ecstasy one might feel today have been shared by lovers long gone. In The Love That Dares, queer love speaks its name through a wonderful selection of surviving letters between lovers and friends, confidants and companions.

Alongside the more famous names coexist beautifully written letters by lesser-known lovers. Together, they weave a narrative of queer love through the centuries, through the romantic, often funny and always poignant words of those who lived it.

This audiobook is read for you by a cast of 16 narrators, including members of the Hachette Pride Network.

Includes letters written by:

• John Cage
• Audre Lorde
• Benjamin Britten
• Lorraine Hansberry
• Walt Whitman
• Vita Sackville-West
• Radclyffe Hall
• Allen Ginsberg

©2022 Ilex Press (P)2022 Octopus Publishing Group

Critic reviews

"What this charming, moving and fascinating collection proves is that the [letter] form itself - a scribbled note, a declaration of love, an outpouring of passion, a bitter word - has always been with us." (Mark Gatiss)