If the World Hate You

S.R. Williams

In 2018, a play encouraged this author to synthesize experiences and thoughts stretching across the past 40 years of his life. This book is the result. Beginning in a remote and socially conservative village, the life described here is later molded by educational privilege and inhibited by expectations that question the place of gay men in schools. It is a life shaped by social pressures, informed by literature, challenged by politics and finding solace in great thinkers. It is a life governed by queer libido, transformed by illicit sex and valued by what many have come to call 'God'. As such, this is a chronicle that affirms queer life, advocates a queer politics, articulates a queer Christianity. It endorses the varied ways in which queer identity is individually expressed within the rainbow culture. It seeks to legitimize pornography and celebrate transgressive sex. This narrative insists that even when, in retrospect, a life looks damaged, poorly lived and worthy of existential regret, it can still be a life confidently celebrated for its authenticity and value. This work is not biographical. The author was born in Wales, educated at both Oxford and Cambridge and spent much of his professional life in elite education. He identifies as queer and counts himself a Christian. To be any more specific than that would be to mislead, for a great fiction has been built around these basic facts.