Roger remembers life as a psychiatric nurse.

Roger ends this extract with memories of his thirty-five-year career in psychiatric nursing, where he'd witness enormous changes in the treatment of mental illness. When he started, there were few medications available and padded cells were still in use. The public used terms like 'raving lunatics' and there was no such thing as 'care in the community'. Despite being strongly in favour of the latter, Roger regrets the way nobody wanted those needing care and politicians wanted any 'care' to come on the cheap, leading to the current situation where patients now must be looked after for the rest of their lives. Roger derives great satisfaction from saying, 'I told you so'.

On the way homosexuality was 'treated', and the attitudes of his colleagues, Roger recalls a psychiatrist who couldn't stand 'poofs', as well as knowing about aversion therapies being used at the time. Roger says he believes in evolutionary rather than revolutionary motives for the development of new treatments.

More disturbingly, Roger, also recalls that there were many cases of young men being locked up in mental hospitals simply to keep them out of the way. Many of these men were from the gentry, and were being locked up to 'avoid scandal', or they didn't come up to family standards and expectations so were hidden away as invalids or, in the case of girls, for being 'morally deficient'. Knowing it was wrong, Roger often asked himself what he should do. He feels that he could have made a 'grand gesture' but that wouldn't have helped those patients incarcerated after he'd been fired for speaking out. Thankfully, he says, the world is different now.

Roger was born in Norwich in 1937. Evacuated to Swaffham, also in Norfolk, he recalls seeing a lot of bomb damage and explosions of V1 terror weapons. He also remembers having wonderful parents and a very understanding grandmother, Rose, and an entertaining great-uncle Sid.

Roger was called up for National Service and chose to go into the RAF, where he trained as a nurse, eventually specialising in psychiatric nursing once he left the RAF. Roger was partnered to Noel for 41 years, until the latter's death two years before this interview for GLAM.

Roger recalls some ribald tales of the gay life in both Norfolk and London and as well as describing some fascinating characters, like Black Anna, who owned a pub in Norwich until the mid-1970s. Roger also describes how he and Noel became deeply involved in the city's high-Anglican church, St John the Baptist church, at Timber Hill.