The London Hub of the 2016 National Festival of LGBT History is well and truly underway. On Friday night we were at Islington Town Hall for the Civic Launch. It was splendidly municipal bling. Roz Kaveney was a star for reading a poem rather than giving a speech, therefore helping get the event back on track after various political people had droned on a bit. The rendition of Labi Siffre’s “So Strong” by the Diversity Choir that closed the evening was superb.

Today we were at the V&A. I attended talks by Stuart Milk, Sabah Choudrey, Fox Fisher and Bisi Alimi, all of which were very good. My apologies to Jana Funke and Travis Alabanza, both of whom I would have loved to see, but they were scheduled against each other and that was the only time I had to sit down with Stuart and go over plans for his visit to Bristol.

Fox had an amazing piece of film with him. If you have seen the My Genderation films you may remember one about an young trans lad called Ruben who was filmed just before he stared on testosterone. Fox has now done an update a couple of years later. The contrast is amazing, as is what has been done with the footage.

By the way, I understand that Sarah Savage will have some previously unseen film footage in her talk at Bristol in two weeks time.

I did my Michael Dillon talk. It wasn’t the best talk I have ever done, but it seemed to go down OK. Also I got some really exciting news about Dillon after the talk which I hope to be able to share soon.

Tomorrow I’ll be off to the Museum of London where I will hopefully get to meet Juno Dawson. Sadly Gandalf appears to be off the bill, but the Emperor Claudius will be there instead.