Drag:
A British History
By Jacob Bloomfield
Published by University of California Press
Drag: A British History is a groundbreaking study of the sustained popularity and changing forms of male drag performance in modern Britain. In his book, Jacob Bloomfield provides fresh perspectives on drag and recovers previously neglected episodes in the history of the art form.
Offering an overview of drag from its very beginnings in the 17th Century, the book pays special attention to its expressions from the late Victorian era until the 1970s, which saw the end of theatre censorship marked with the passage of The Theatres Act (1968). The book closes with a look at ‘radical drag’, a more recent phase in the theatrical genre (from the 1970s to the present time) which claims it as ‘the preserve of gay culture and politics’.
The challenge
Despite the topic being a popular one, especially after TV shows such as ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’, the book was written from a historical perspective and it mostly focussed on the Victorian era/ first half of the 20th Century (even though it dedicated a chapter to drag personality Danny La Rue who died at the beginning of the 21st Century).
The solution
In addition to the national newspapers and magazines, I contacted a variety of media categories relevant to the book’s themes: LGBTQ; theatre; history… I worked closely with the author to devise media pitches and his input was invaluable.
The result
The book was covered across a wide range of media starting with newspapers such as The Daily Telegraph and The Glasgow Herald who respectively published long features; iconic Dazed magazine included the book in its ‘dA-Zed Guide to British Drag’; QX magazine (London) and GScene (Brighton) both featured the book; several podcasts interviewed Jacob: HistoryExtra (BBC History magazine); Versus History; The History of European Theatre; and Dirty Sex History, among others.
Leading art publication ArtReview featured the book, and influential theatre publication, The Stage, published a long interview with the author. Blogs, ‘Everything Theatre’ and ‘Aleks Sierz – New writing for the British stage’ were among those to review the book. Times Radio (the broadcast arm of The Times and the Sunday Times newspapers) interviewed Jacob.