London's long-lost gay watering holes are recalled by Rex, where Brylcreemed men all wore suits and there were entrepreneurs and Guardsmen aplenty.

In this extract Rex talks about London's gay pubs and clubs and the prevalence of 'rent-boys' and guardsmen available for sex. At the time, he had about a dozen main friends and met many others quite by accident, saying the 'world around Piccadilly was quite small'. Sometimes parties were arranged, usually in the privacy of people's flats. The main 'gay areas' of London were Earl's Court, Piccadilly and Chelsea, with pubs like the Queen's Head, which featured a Scotsman playing old records and Noel Coward-style pieces on the piano. He recalls that the men almost always wore suits, with jeans only arriving in the 60s.

Rex was never very taken by the leather scene at The Coleherne in Earl's Court and recalls that another club, on the Embankment, had too many 'old men', meaning they were over 40, in it. There were many 'rent-boys' around and until the late 50s, guardsmen could also be relied upon to provide sexual favours - for a fee. Rex was himself once mistaken for a guardsman and says he could have made a quick £5.

Reflecting on the 'transactional excuse', where a supposedly straight man has sex with a gay man, only for the money, Rex says he was never convinced by the idea that a straight 'rent-boy' was more desirable than a gay one. What's more, he never needed to pay for sex with a 'rent-boy' - as he was managing well enough already.

Teacher, actor, author and tour-guide, Rex was born in 1928, in Dorset. His father was a village butcher, and his mother was a housewife. Having his first homosexual experience when he was nine or ten, Rex went to school in the sea-side town of Weymouth, where he had several more encounters with sailors and men in public lavatories.

Aged 19, Rex began a relationship with an older man, a debonair and cultivated ex-officer, who was part of the 1930s 'country house set', and who also introduced him to the word 'homosexual'. On moving to London, Rex lived with a new partner, John. Meanwhile, the well-set 'country gentleman', back in Dorset was arrested and later convicted for 'corrupting young men'. Rex was also drawn into the police investigation but escaped their close attention.

Rex attended RADA, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, along with John (later Joe) Orton and Kenneth Halliwell, both of whom he knew and liked, though he lost touch with the pair before they became famous (Orton was later murdered by his lover, Halliwell, in 1967). Rex had a few bit-parts in films and worked as a freelance writer for BBC Radio, though for most of his life, he was a teacher His partner John worked for J. Sainsbury's, as did Rex for a short while, though John stayed on at the company.

Rex penned an autobiographically based novel called 'Rid England of this Plague', the title of which is a quote from a 1953 statement from the then Home Secretary, David Maxwell Fyfe, who promised to eradicate homosexuality from Britain. In his later years, Rex was involved with the 'Friends of Nunhead Cemetery' conservation group, becoming a committee member and the author of many of their publications. Rex died in 2017.