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Hello and welcome to the Spectators Book Club podcast. I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor

of The Spectator. This week I'm joined by the Member of Parliament and historian Chris Bryant,

whose new book is called James and John, a true story of prejudice and murder. And the James and John,

he describes, are two men who were put to death for homosexuality in the first half of the

19th century. Chris, can you tell me a bit about how this story first, kind of as it

were, caught your eye? Because they're not celebrated figures, at least as far as I know.

No, and they're probably not celebrated because they were working class men. They were both

servants and labourers who in many ways don't get into the history books in any other regard

other than the fact that they were hanged in 1835. But I wrote a book a few years ago called The Glamour Boys, which is about a bunch

of gay Tory MPs in the 1930s who wanted the UK to stand up to Hitler and some of whom were

killed in action in the war. And as part of writing that book, I had to explain the legal situation in the UK

regarding homosexuality. And some of the laws that I was referring to stemmed all the way back

to the Napoleonic Wars, because when people came back from the wars, the British government

introduced a whole series of vagrancy acts, part of which dealt with homosexuality and importuning and other misdemeanors.

And that's what introduced me to this moment in history.

And it's strange because if you read a lot of British history, you'll know about the early

18th century and Molly Houses, Mother Claps, Molly House. That was very well reported

in lots of newspapers and also in the court records. And then, of course, 170 years later,

you know all about Oscar Wilde and the love that dare not know its name. But this period in the

...