The astonishing hidden story of the first man to come out as gay in Britain has been revealed by Christopher Stephens (2000, Theology) in a new book that stands to alter our understanding of gay rights history while tracing an extraordinary friendship that began when Stephens was studying at Christ Church.

The Light of Day (Headline Press, Hachette, May 2025) argues that the uncoerced and unambiguous declaration made in a signed letter to national media by Roger Butler in 1960 – a little-known 25-year-old, acting seven years before the decriminalisation of male homosexuality in England and Wales – is a forgotten milestone that places “coming out” as a political tactic at least a decade earlier than it was believed to have begun. 

Stephens and his coauthor Louise Radnofsky (2001, Univ) draw on an archive painstakingly created by Butler (1970, Balliol) that takes readers through the hidden underground of 1950s gay, activist London, Butler's loss of sight and complete blindness by his mid-30s, before he won a place at Balliol to read History as a mature student and then settled in East Oxford for the rest of his life. 

Butler's papers were bequeathed to Stephens, who reflects in the book on his kinship with Butler as gay men of different generations, against a backdrop of gay Oxford in the early 2000s. Stephens and Radnofsky also explore the reasons Butler and his role in the gay rights movement was almost lost to history – until now. 

Copies can be obtained here. 

Some reviews of the book:

• 'At times gripping, at times very personal…faithfully recorded and beautifully written' – Matthew Parris
• 'Your book is the “really good book. Just one” that Roger Butler would have wanted' – Sir Ian McKellen
• 'Searching, sad and quietly exhilarating, The Light of Day evokes British society's gay enlightenment through the prism of a single remarkable life. More than this, it tells a resonant story of youth, age and the possibilities of platonic love' – James Cahill
• 'An engrossing, beautiful book about a chance encounter and the unfolding story of a forgotten gay hero!' – Lord Michael Cashman
• 'Miraculous. The Light of Day reclaims a forgotten hero ... I couldn't put it down' – Will Tosh
• 'More than a biography of a shamefully overlooked activist, The Light of Day paints a beautiful portrait of a friendship …  Tender, contemplative, wise, and funny, it fills the heart and then breaks it' – AJ West.