Episode description

Gay life at home and in the 'city' - a special edition of Thinking Allowed presented by Laurie Taylor. From squatted terraces to rented bedsits, the social historian, Matt Cook, explores the domestic and family lives of gay men - the famous, infamous and unknown - in London over the past century. The social anthropologist, Rachael Scicluna, charts the changing domestic lives of metropolitan lesbians. And US sociologist, Amin Ghaziani, describes the way in which urban enclaves such as Greenwich Village in New York have long provided sexual minorities with a safe haven in an unsafe world.

How have gentrification, as well as increasing social acceptance and legal rights, impacted on the existence of gay neighbourhoods? And do lesbian and gay home lives now mirror those of heterosexuals rather than offering alternative models of domesticity, family and belonging?

Producer: Jayne Egerton.