IAA - David Stain Diaries: Radio Play

Queer Northern Ireland: Sexuality before liberation is an AHRC funded project in collaboration with Tom Hulme at QUB. It looks at queer lived experiences in North of Ireland/Northern Ireland from the late nineteenth century until the early 1970s. As part of the research on the project we found 38 volumes of diaries written by a gay man, David Strain, in Belfast from the 1920s to the 1960s. The diaries between 1920s and 1940s are incredibly detailed about David Strain’s thoughts and feelings about homosexuality and the many conversations he had with gay men. The survival of the diaries thus gives a rare and remarkable window into a queer world that would otherwise be almost entirely invisible and limited to the sparse criminal records of men who were arrested for having sex in public. The picture painted by the diaries is one of a vibrant queer world and David’s journey of discovery within it. Having read the diaries, the potential to dramatize these for radio was clear. David recorded detailed conversations verbatim so there is a unique capturing of contemporary language, and it offers a view of Belfast that has never been presented before- of a gay subculture, operating freely and openly without fear of prosecution. The project will work with QUB and BBC to develop and produce a radio play based on the diaries