Ros Phillips

While London’s Gays The Word bookshop is more in the public eye, (it featured heavily in the film Pride), less is known about Lavender Menace, the bookshop that began in the cloakroom of Scotland’s first gay nightclub and became the beating heart of Edinburgh’s LGBT community. Now celebrated as a play, Love Song to Lavender Menace performs at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival following a sell-out run at the Lyceum. Paul T. Davies caught up with Sigrid Neilson, co-founder of Lavender Menace, and the team behind the show. I myself am just catching up with the history of Lavender Menace, so, for visitors to the Fringe, can you give me a brief outline of the history-maybe with one or two good anecdotes? SIGRID NEILSON, CO-FOUNDER OF LAVENDER MENACE: The bookshop grew out of the fact that, for many LGBT people, including me, life in the sixties and seventies mostly had to … Read more