Bryant pens true story of 'heroic group' of gay wartime MPs

Bloomsbury has signed a work of non-fiction by historian and MP Chris Bryant about a heroic group of gay and bisexual MPs.

Entitled The Glamour Boys (after the nickname the group was given by Neville Chamberlain), the book will explore what publishing director Alexis Kirschbaum called a "crucial" and "overlooked" narrative. 

The MPs became the earliest and most outspoken opponents of the government’s policy of appeasement of the Nazis in the build-up to the Second World War, according to Bloomsbury, and, despite having their phones tapped and the insinuations about their "bachelor" status, they repeatedly spoke out against the national consensus.

"At a time when homosexuality risked a prison sentence, these men risked exposure on a daily basis in order to fight the Hitler and the Nazis," said Bloomsbury. Although exempt from military service, six of the group demanded to fight and were killed in action.

Bryant, the book's author and the first gay MP to celebrate his civil partnership in the Palace of Westminster, said: "This is a story I've wanted to tell for years. It's about very secret heart-rending bravery, and I’m delighted to be doing so with Alexis and the team at Bloomsbury."

Kirschbaum, who acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Jim Gill at United Agents, said: "I’m very proud to be publishing The Glamour Boys – a book that sheds light on a moment in British history that has, until now, been overlooked. It’s a crucial narrative, and there is nobody better positioned to tell it than Chris Bryant."

Bloomsbury will publish The Glamour Boys in 2019.

Bryant wrote a critical history of the British Aristocracy for Transworld called Entitled in 2017 and published Parliament: The Biography, volumes one and two, with Doubleday.