Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Fabulosa!: The Story of Polari, Britain's Secret Gay Language

Fabulosa!: The Story of Polari, Britain's Secret Gay Language

Baker, Paul

Paperback

General ReferenceGeneral World HistoryGLBTQIA Studies

Publisher Price: $20.00

ISBN10: 1789142946
ISBN13: 9781789142945
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Published: Aug 2 2020
Pages: 320
Weight: 0.65
Height: 1.00 Width: 5.00 Depth: 7.70
Language: English
A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year

Richly evocative and entertaining.--Guardian

An essential book for anyone who wants to Polari bona!--Attitude

Exuberant, richly detailed. . . . A delightful read.--Tatler

Polari is a language that was used chiefly by gay men in the first half of the twentieth century. It offered its speakers a degree of public camouflage and a means of identification. Its colorful roots are varied--from Cant to Lingua Franca to dancers' slang--and in the mid-1960s it was thrust into the limelight by the characters Julian and Sandy, voiced by Hugh Paddick and Kenneth Williams, on the BBC radio show Round the Horne (Oh hello Mr Horne, how bona to vada your dolly old eek!). Paul Baker recounts the story of Polari with skill, humor, and tenderness. He traces its historical origins and describes its linguistic nuts and bolts, explores the ways and the environments in which it was spoken, explains the reasons for its decline, and tells of its unlikely reemergence in the twenty-first century. With a cast of drag queens and sailors, Dilly boys and macho clones, Fabulosa! is an essential document of recent history--a fascinating and fantastically readable account of this funny, filthy, and ingenious language.

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