The Milkman’s On His Way

“It was good to be Ewan, I said to myself, and good to be here doing this. I’m no longer a muddled kid: this is man’s estate.”

Ewan Macrae is gay. At the turn of the 1980s, being queer in a Cornish seaside town seems impossible.

The teenage world he lives in is obsessed with girls, jobs and surfing, yet the handsome Leslie – his ripped surfing buddy -preoccupies Ewan’s thoughts. Unsure if his parents will ever accept his sexuality, Ewan knows that in his claustrophobic hometown he’ll never fully be himself. Perhaps in a bustling and far-away city like London there is a whole new world waiting…

Published by the ground breaking Gay Men’s Press in 1982, The Milkman’s on His Way was one of the first explicitly queer young adult novels to appear in the UK. For many gay teenagers of the early 1980s, it was a rare chance to read life-affirming stories that put their experiences at the centre. The book was celebrated on publication, but scandal and controversy followed later.

Published just before the AIDS pandemic took hold, The Milkman’s on His Way was hated by the Daily Mail and later suppressed under Section 28 due to public outcry about its “obscene,” sexually explicit contents.