From Oscar Wilde to Noel Coward, from Guy Burgess to Joe Orton, to gay rights and AIDS, the history of gay men in the 20th century reveals a little-known private world, which nevertheless mirrors every aspect of Britain's changing social culture. Driven underground by the trial and sentence of Oscar Wilde in 1895, the homosexual underworld built up its own class hierarchy, shifting political allegiances, its own modish slang and etiquette.