Fabulosa!: The Story of Polari, Britain's Secret Gay Language (Hardback)
  • Fabulosa!: The Story of Polari, Britain's Secret Gay Language (Hardback)
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Fabulosa!: The Story of Polari, Britain's Secret Gay Language (Hardback)

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£15.99
Hardback 328 Pages
Published: 01/07/2019

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Polari was a language used chiefly by gay men in the first half of the twentieth century. At a time when being gay could result in criminal prosecution - or worse - Polari offered its speakers a degree of public camouflage, a way of expressing humour, and a means of identification and of establishing a community. Its roots are colourful and varied - from eighteenth-century Cant to Lingua Franca to prostitutes' slang - and in the mid-1960s it was thrust into the limelight by the characters Julian and Sandy, voiced by Hugh Paddick and Kenneth Williams, on the BBC radio show Round the Horne. (`Oh Mr Horne, how bona to vada your dolly old eke!') Paul Baker recounts the story of Polari with skill, erudition and tenderness. He traces its historical origins and describes its linguistic nuts and bolts, explores the ways and the environments in which it was spoken, explains the reasons for its decline, and tells of its unlikely re-emergence in the twenty-first century. With a cast of drag queens and sailors, Dilly boys and macho clones, Fabulosa! is both an essential document of recent history and a fascinating and fantastically readable account of this funny, filthy and ingenious language.

Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 9781789141320
Number of pages: 328
Dimensions: 216 x 138 mm

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“Informative and engaging, though a little reductive”

I made a mental note to look up this book after seeing it in our ‘New and Bestselling’ section at work. Through my best friend’s work on queer linguistics, Polari was something I was aware of, and I hoped that the... More

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