Peter Simpson

Love Unconditional: Friendship Needs to Win Approval but Love Once Given is Unconditional. Peter Simpson

This work represents a view of the world through the eyes of one who lived through an age of changing attitudes towards many areas of morality, particularly sexuality, abortion, prostitution, drinking and gaming. The chapters describing the London of the 1960's are illuminating. The author has removed the rose-tinted spectacles through which the decade is so often projected and inverted them; the veneer of good times is therefore in the background to the decade's true sordidness and squalor. A number of the scenes whilst not gratuitous are certainly not for the prudish. Although autobiographical this is a modern story about Peter and Vincent's life together, portraying a homosexual relationship without sensationalising and could be about any couple. At the beginning of the story, Peter is in Australia where his partner committed suicide. In 1961 this was still a mortal sin for a Catholic. Devastated by the loss Peter decides to return to England and his family thinking that his life was over, not realising that it would be the beginning of a life full of events. London in 1961 was not the place it is now. Friendships between Black and White men or women were not altogether acceptable. However things were changing, the old order was being challenged in the UK, Caribbean and Africa and Vincent and Peter were part of those changes. The book spans 28 years with all the changes that have occurred in our society, highlighting the ups and downs of a relationship.