Maybe, too, living so long in east London – no. Tell the truth. Maybe that a significant reason for our departure from east London was that it had become increasingly unpleasant for gay people to live there: the verbal abuse we’d received, twice, walking home, “gay-free zone” stickers on lamp-posts. Maybe this, too, left me with a slight (and not subconscious) understanding of why working-class men from Luton would want to protest about the Islamification (as they saw it) of their (as they considered it) town.