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She lost them, and remembered them, and somehow kept going' Russell T Davies, creator of Channel 4's IT'S A SIN In 2010, Claire opened the Violet Bakery. Call us on: +442033020460 This is her latest cookbook. With her band of best friends - of which many were young, talented gay men with big dreams of their own - she grabbed London by the horns: partying with drag queens at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, hosting cabarets at her glamorous flat, flitting across town to any jobs could get. In this moving memoir, IT'S A SIN's Jill Nalder tells the true story of her life during the AIDS crisis, and that of friends and colleagues, doctors and nurses, activists and fundraisers. She recounts juggling a busy West End career while campaigning for AIDS awareness and research, educating herself and caring for the sick. And we're updating this list every week. When Jill Nalder arrived at drama school in London in the early 1980s, she was ready for her life to begin.
Reviews
hero_of_canton
The book will have you laughing on one page and crying on the next. Large parts of this book are very sad. Nalder doesn’t sugarcoat what was happening at all and alongside the awful effects of the various infections and illnesses that people with AIDS inevitably find themselves dealing with they were also, in the main, desperately trying to hide it all from their loved ones and co-workers due to the stigma of the disease and just of homosexuality itself. They worked and played hard and life was good, until word started to spread of an illness coming to the fore in America and being dubbed the “gay flu”.
Alexander Adams
A lot of the talk was around them having brought it on themselves and why worry about doing anything about it. When Jill Nalder moved to London to join drama school in the 1980s she quickly formed a close friendship group, mainly made up of young, gay men with similar dreams of stardom. I enjoyed the fact that Nalder also gave an insight into the West End theatre scene during the 1980s and she’s keen to show the full lives of the men she knew who were affected by AIDS.
I would highly recommend this to anyone who is wanting to learn more about this frankly quite dark time in U. I think it’s easy to forget sometimes just how recent that was. There was almost an apathy from the Government around the AIDS crisis, particularly whilst it was seen as a disease that was “only” affecting gay men.
history. I watched “It’s A Sin” back in 2021 when it aired and absolutely loved it so I knew I needed to read this book by the woman who the character of Jill was based on. They weren’t defined by their AIDS status and they certainly didn’t want to be seen as victims. Before too long Jill finds herself becoming an expert in AIDS as she works hard to support her friends as well as trying to maintain work in the West End and fundraise for a cure.
K. It still seems wild to me that during my lifetime there was still such a stigma around homosexuality. I was only born in 1984 so although I was really a little young to be aware of the AIDS crisis as it happened I had heard of it as I got older.
The media reporting around high profile figures affected by it didn’t help either. They were, sadly, guinea pigs in a lot of ways though as new treatments were tried all the time and people were obviously desperate for any little glimmer of hope and willing to try anything. Nalder draws some interesting parallels between this and the COVID-19 pandemic.
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