National Archives research resources

I meant to post about this when I first saw it, but I think I overlooked it. Amongst the May 2010 list of records recently made public by the National Archives is the 1974 "Guidance for departments on the employment of homosexuals in the public service". Unfortunately this isn't one of the documents in the May batch that's been uploaded to DocumentsOnline, so you'll have to pay (at a rather stiff rate) to get a copy of the file, but even the short description might be of use as a bit of background for m/m and slash writers:

Following recent changes in the law and in public opinion towards homosexuals, which had lessened the risk of blackmail, the Civil Service decided it was timely to reconsider the general policy on the promotion of homosexual staff to senior positions. Previously this was prohibited, as there was a risk that the employee could be blackmailed about his or her sexuality and could expose government secrets. Officials acknowledged there was an equal risk of blackmail for a person who committed adultery and concealed the fact. It was put forward that each case should be looked at on its merits and that there would still be restrictions in certain departments, such as those where staff could be posted to countries that considered homosexuality illegal. This file also contains press coverage and public response on the issue including views that the Civil Service were being discriminatory.

There's a whole lot of other stuff on the National Archives website that might be useful to writers. One useful area of the site is a set of tutorials in reading old documents, including a nifty little currency converter that can give you an estimate of how much a sum of money in an old document is worth in today's terms, or the buying power of a sum in various years -- dating back to 1270.

Note to self...

...if you are going to put up the framed Suzan Lovett slash prints on the study wall on the assumption that they will be swapped out prior to visits by people who will not appreciate them, do not hang them in the area where you're pulling out the furniture in order to get to the wall to put picture hooks in it. You don't want to have to pull out the furniture again to get them down in a hurry.

Fortunately I thought of this *before* putting in the hooks in a pattern that assumed that particular set of frame sizes was going there.